Book Review - Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia
Title: Leave No Trace
Author: Mindy Mejia
Publication Date: September 4, 2018
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 352 pages
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
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Goodreads Blurb:
There is a place in Minnesota with hundreds of miles of glacial lakes and untouched forests called the Boundary Waters. Ten years ago a man and his son trekked into this wilderness and never returned.
Search teams found their campsite ravaged by what looked like a bear. They were presumed dead until a decade later...the son appeared. Discovered while ransacking an outfitter store, he was violent and uncommunicative and sent to a psychiatric facility. Maya Stark, the assistant language therapist, is charged with making a connection with their high-profile patient. No matter how she tries, however, he refuses to answer questions about his father or the last ten years of his life
But Maya, who was abandoned by her own mother, has secrets, too. And as she’s drawn closer to this enigmatic boy who is no longer a boy, she’ll risk everything to reunite him with his father who has disappeared from the known world.
My Thoughts:
It’s always a disappointment when a book fails to deliver on a really promising and unique premise. Unfortunately, that was the case with this novel for me. It starts off with a very interesting situation: Maya, a 23-year-old speech therapist, is working in the psychiatric hospital where she was previously a patient when a violent young man is brought in. It’s quickly discovered that the young man is Lucas Blackthorn, who went missing with his father 10 years earlier. Maya is assigned to his case and as they work together, it becomes clear that there’s something more to Lucas’ story than meets the eye.
I don’t mind suspending disbelief when I’m reading, but it was just too much with this novel. The majority of the novel takes place in the hospital. So many of the elements surrounding the setting felt so unrealistic, from Lucas’ treatments to Maya’s employment (clearly a huge conflict of interest to hire a former patient!). The tasks Maya is asked to undertake are so far out of her field, and the timelines of Lucas’ incarceration are all over the place. All of this really took me out of the story.
Then there’s the relationship between Maya and Lucas. It felt extremely forced to me. I can understand why Maya would sympathize with Lucas’ desire to find his father, given her history, but the romantic aspect never felt like it fit to me. Maya also comes across as extremely immature, which may have been intentional and again, is understandable to an extent with the history she has, but it just really highlights how unrealistic Lucas’ personality is by comparison. Here’s a man who has supposedly spent his formative years in complete isolation, with only his father for company, and yet his understanding of society and technology and the world at large seem to be pretty much entirely intact. Sure, he’s aggressive and apparently has never learned to swear, but on the whole he seems to know what’s going on around him far more than I would have expected from a character who is supposed to have been a forest hermit from age 9 and onward…I didn’t buy him as a character at all.
I think I would have enjoyed this novel much more if it had focused more on the past than on the repetitive and poorly executed escape attempts; Josiah and Jane were by far the most interesting and relatable characters in the novel but the reader only gets tidbits of their stories.
On the whole, this novel kept my interest but not in a way that felt satisfying. I couldn’t relate to either of the main characters, and the plot was too far-fetched for me to really immerse myself in the story. I’d be open to reading the author’s other works, because the plot was certainly interesting, but the execution was too over the top for me to feel invested.
**Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for providing a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
(note: this is an affiliate link)
Goodreads Blurb:
There is a place in Minnesota with hundreds of miles of glacial lakes and untouched forests called the Boundary Waters. Ten years ago a man and his son trekked into this wilderness and never returned.
Search teams found their campsite ravaged by what looked like a bear. They were presumed dead until a decade later...the son appeared. Discovered while ransacking an outfitter store, he was violent and uncommunicative and sent to a psychiatric facility. Maya Stark, the assistant language therapist, is charged with making a connection with their high-profile patient. No matter how she tries, however, he refuses to answer questions about his father or the last ten years of his life
But Maya, who was abandoned by her own mother, has secrets, too. And as she’s drawn closer to this enigmatic boy who is no longer a boy, she’ll risk everything to reunite him with his father who has disappeared from the known world.
My Thoughts:
It’s always a disappointment when a book fails to deliver on a really promising and unique premise. Unfortunately, that was the case with this novel for me. It starts off with a very interesting situation: Maya, a 23-year-old speech therapist, is working in the psychiatric hospital where she was previously a patient when a violent young man is brought in. It’s quickly discovered that the young man is Lucas Blackthorn, who went missing with his father 10 years earlier. Maya is assigned to his case and as they work together, it becomes clear that there’s something more to Lucas’ story than meets the eye.
I don’t mind suspending disbelief when I’m reading, but it was just too much with this novel. The majority of the novel takes place in the hospital. So many of the elements surrounding the setting felt so unrealistic, from Lucas’ treatments to Maya’s employment (clearly a huge conflict of interest to hire a former patient!). The tasks Maya is asked to undertake are so far out of her field, and the timelines of Lucas’ incarceration are all over the place. All of this really took me out of the story.
Then there’s the relationship between Maya and Lucas. It felt extremely forced to me. I can understand why Maya would sympathize with Lucas’ desire to find his father, given her history, but the romantic aspect never felt like it fit to me. Maya also comes across as extremely immature, which may have been intentional and again, is understandable to an extent with the history she has, but it just really highlights how unrealistic Lucas’ personality is by comparison. Here’s a man who has supposedly spent his formative years in complete isolation, with only his father for company, and yet his understanding of society and technology and the world at large seem to be pretty much entirely intact. Sure, he’s aggressive and apparently has never learned to swear, but on the whole he seems to know what’s going on around him far more than I would have expected from a character who is supposed to have been a forest hermit from age 9 and onward…I didn’t buy him as a character at all.
I think I would have enjoyed this novel much more if it had focused more on the past than on the repetitive and poorly executed escape attempts; Josiah and Jane were by far the most interesting and relatable characters in the novel but the reader only gets tidbits of their stories.
On the whole, this novel kept my interest but not in a way that felt satisfying. I couldn’t relate to either of the main characters, and the plot was too far-fetched for me to really immerse myself in the story. I’d be open to reading the author’s other works, because the plot was certainly interesting, but the execution was too over the top for me to feel invested.
**Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for providing a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
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