#Review – Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets @dlesbecquets @BerkleyNAL @FirstToRead

Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets
Penguin Group – Berkley
Publication Date: February 9, 2016
Date Read: January 1, 2016

In captivating prose, Diane Les Becquets tells the story of one woman missing in the Colorado wilderness and another bent on discovering the missing woman’s whereabouts, in an unforgettably moving and thrilling literary debut.

It is the last weekend of the season for Amy Raye Latour to get away. Driven to spend days alone in the wilderness, Amy Raye, mother of two, is compelled by the quiet and the rush of nature. But this time, her venture into a remote area presents a different set of dangers than Amy Raye has planned for and she finds herself on the verge of the precarious edge that she’s flirted with her entire life.

When Amy Raye doesn’t return to camp, ranger Pru Hathaway and her dog respond to the missing person’s call. After an unexpected snowfall and few leads, the operation turns into a search and recovery. Pru, though, is not resigned to that. The more she learns about the woman for whom she is searching, and about Amy Raye’s past, the more she suspects that Amy Raye might yet be alive. Pru’s own search becomes an obsession for a woman whose life is just as mysterious as the clues she has left behind.

As the novel follows Amy Raye and Pru in alternating threads, Breaking Wild assumes the white-knuckled pace of a thriller laying bare Amy Raye’s ultimate reckoning with the secrets of her life, and Pru’s dogged pursuit of the woman who, against all odds, she believes she can find.

I thought that this was a great book.  I love a good survival story so the blurb really caught my attention.  This book was most certainly a survival story but it was so much more than that.  The characters made this story come alive.  I kept the pages turning because I had to know what was going to happen next.  I was glued to the book from the time I started reading until I had reached the last page.

This book is told from two alternating points of view.  Amy Raye is on a hunting trip with a couple of friends.  She is hoping to get an elk before the trip is over so she goes out early in the morning to do just that.  Pru is a ranger in the area and spends a lot of her days checking on hunters and helping with search and rescue when needed.  Each of these woman has their own story to tell and each voice was distinctive and equally interesting.  So many times when a book is written in alternating point of views, I find that I really prefer one of the perspectives much more than the other.  Not so with this book.  I felt the need to learn everything about each of these women.

The descriptions in the book were excellent and really pulled me into the story.  I felt that I was right there with Amy Raye when she was hunting the elk.   I have never been to Colorado wilderness but I felt like I was there while reading this book.  The terrain would have been very difficult to find someone who is lost and even harder to find your way out.  The determination of both Pru and Amy Raye really showed on the page.  Amy Raye refused to give up and did some things I couldn’t imagine in her quest to survive. Pru wouldn’t stop looking and felt the need to find out what had happened to Amy Raye.

The writing in this book was excellent.  I absolutely loved how the two women’s back stories were woven into the book.  I grew to understand each of them a little better with every chapter.  The things in both of their lives that had led them to be in that Colorado wilderness together were always interesting and at times heartbreaking.  The pacing of the book was nearly perfect.  There were no slow points in the book.  Everything we need to know was shared at precisely the perfect time to keep my interest peaked.

I would highly recommend this book to others.  This is the first time that I have read anything by Diane Les Becquets but I definitely plan read more of her work.  

I received an advance reader edition of this book from Penguin Group – Berkley via First to Read for the purpose of providing an honest review.

About the Author

Photographer | Nathaniel Boesch

Diane Les Becquets is a Professor of English and a faculty member at Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA Program in Fiction and Nonfiction. In addition to teaching creative writing, she has worked as a medical journalist; an archaeology assistant; a marketing consultant; a sand and gravel dispatcher; a copywriter; and a lifeguard, and is also an avid outdoorswoman. A native of Nashville, she spent almost fourteen years living in a small Colorado ranching town before moving to New Hampshire.

Author Links: Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

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