The Hiking Trip by Jenny Blackhurst | Book Review

The Hiking Trip by Jenny Blackhurst
Release Date: 12th January 2023
Genre: Adult, Thriller
Source: Publisher, NetGalley
Rating: ★★★

The trip of a lifetime ends in murder

Maisie leaves her precarious home life in the UK to hike the West Coast Trail in Canada. She meets brother and sister Sera and Ric, and what begins as a fun-filled experience in a beautiful secluded setting quickly turns sour.

Twenty-five years later, a woman named Laura is panicked to learn that a body was found near the trail and the police suspect they’re the bones of Sera. The secret she’s been hiding for a quarter of a century is about to come out – and someone is determined to make sure she tells the truth, and pays the price, as she should have done back then. But what lengths will Laura go to in order to protect her carefully constructed family life?

The Hiking Trip could have been worse, but it also could have been a whole lot better. My main issue with this book was the dual timelines, as I don’t think they worked very well with this kind of story. This was partly due to the author’s writing style, as she constantly ended the present day chapters with a dun dun DUNNNNN cliffhanger that had me rolling my eyes after the third one in a row.

I was a lot more invested in the flashback storyline where Maisie was hiking on a Canadian trail. I thought this book would have more of that, to be honest. I wanted to see more camping, more atmosphere, more struggle. Instead the book seemed to heavily rely on the present day chapters to build suspense, and I didn’t really care about a house wife from Reading with a mysterious past.

The Hiking Trip was alright, but I wouldn’t reach for it if you’re looking for a survival wilderness thriller, because this is definitely more of a UK domestic.