About the Book
The dangers of Alaska aren’t limited to storms, starvation, and grizzly bears. Sometimes the most dangerous thing is the person you love.
It’s summer in Alaska and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and gray. Around her is thick forest and jagged mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape.
Carrying her own secrets and a fierce need to protect her young son, Liv must navigate a new world where extreme weather, starvation, and dangerous wildlife are not the only threats she faces. With winter’s arrival imminent, she knows she must reckon with her past and the choices that brought her to the unforgiving Alaskan landscape if she is ever going to make it out alive.
A story of survival in the wilds of Alaska, The Beautiful and the Wild explores the question of whether we can ever truly know the person we love—or ourselves.
My Review
I’m usually all for a good thriller, but I had trouble from the start getting into this one. It starts off with Liv being held prisoner in Alaska by her husband – who allegedly died but is living in the wild with multiple other women and children. Liv can’t figure out how to escape with her own son, and understands she needs to pretend to go along with the charades so she stays alive while she figures out her plan. We get some flashbacks to the past, dealing with the death of Liv’s mother and how that situation factored into so much of her marriage and motherhood, and potentially even led her to the Alaskan wilderness, trying to understand who the man that she thought she knew was. While there were times it was suspenseful, I mostly found the plot to be odd and had a hard time feeling empathy for any of the characters. I didn’t see a ton of character development throughout the story, just people making strange choices and not taking ownership of any of their actions throughout. I still finished the book because I was curious if Liv would escape or not, but not a favorite of mine.
