The River by Peter Heller

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The River by Peter Heller. My thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the blog tour.



From Goodreads

YOU CAN TRY TO OUTRUN NATURE... BUT WILL YOU SURVIVE ONE MAN'S FURY?

TWO FRIENDS
Wynn and Jack have been best friends since their first day of college: a gentle giant from Vermont and a rugged kid raised on a ranch in Colorado, brought together by their shared love of literature and the great outdoors.

THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
When they decide to take time off university and canoe down the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate the ultimate wilderness experience: two young men navigating the rapids through the quiet, imposing landscapes of North America.
No phones. No fellow travellers. 
No way of going back.

A HELLISH RIDE
But as a raging wildfire starts to make its way towards them - reducing the towering trees to charred carcasses - their idyllic expedition becomes a desperate race for survival.

And when a man suddenly appears, seemingly in a state of shock and claiming his wife has vanished, the fight against nature's destructive power becomes entangled with a much deadlier game of cat and mouse.

Because the only thing more dangerous than a burning forest is a man's thirst for revenge...

My thoughts

I was sent a copy of this in order to take part in the blog tour. I really enjoyed this story and gave it a 4/5 or 8/10.

This is the first book that I've read by Peter Heller and if the rest of his work is as good as this, then I'm in for a treat with several books to his name to look forward to in the future.

This story tells the relationship between two men who formed a lasting friendship at college, bonding over a love of literature and all things outdoors. Setting off on an exciting expedition the two friends have no idea what fate has in store for them. How will they cope and will they survive, the dangers that nature and man has planned.

Peter Heller has a way of telling the story and making you think that you're there with them, he weaves the descriptive well with the narrative and creates the tension, danger and atmosphere that nature and man has combined together to make this a race for survival. This is very reminiscent of some of the wilderness style movies that I've seen in the past where man is pitted against nature. In my opinion it would make a great movie as the descriptions take you there and you can visualise the wilderness that the characters find themselves in.

The book is available in hard back or as a kindle read. Why not treat yourself to a copy and immerse yourself in the great outdoors.

About the Author

Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River. He lives in Denver, Colorado.