#BookReview Descent by Tim Johnston

Descent by Tim Johnston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV.

As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?

Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller

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This book hit me pretty hard. I had it for ages on my Ipad but the time never really came for me to read it until now when I saw that it would be released, then I thought “what the heck, I read it, who knows it could be good”. It was harrowing to read the family’s agonizing search. The father Grant who stayed and search, the mother Angela who in the end returned home but never really could go on living, the son Sean who finally left them and lived in his car and worked for gas money just driving around...

In the end, I just want to say that Tim Johnston has written a marvelous book, very beautiful written about the evil things men do. In many ways this is so much worse than paranormal horror because things like this happen, children disappear, some are found and some are never found. I cared deeply for the family and I even came to care very much for a character that I never really liked until in the very end, then he did something that made me actually get tearful and I seldom cry when I read books.

I recommend this book warmly!

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!