Review: 'Nowhere to Hide' by Nell Pattison

A snow storm, the holiday period, a group of acquaintances, and then, a shot gun blast. What more could you possibly ask for in a thriller? While I enjoyed many of the aspects of Nowhere to Hide, I also had my doubts here and there. This book was first on NetGalley as Hide, but I must say that Nowhere to Hide does work very well as well! Thanks to Avon Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 12/9/2021
Publisher: Avon Books

Seven friends. One killer. You can run, but you can’t hide…

The Boxing Day hike is meant to bring their nature group together.
Emily, the sister who never lets her hearing loss hold her back.
Lauren, the sister who always feels a step behind.
Morna, who doesn’t get on with Lauren.
Ben, whose feelings for Emily border on obsession.
Dan, the quiet newcomer to the group.
Kai, who isn’t just on the hike to enjoy the wildlife.
And Alec, the one who knows all their secrets.

As the sun sets, a gunshot rings out on the nature reserve.
One of the seven is dead. And one of their number killed them…

I have really enjoyed Nell Pattison's Paige Northwood-series over the past few years. Paige is an interpreter for the Deaf and it gives a whole new look at the usual thriller tropes. The uncertainty of not hearing anything, the micro-aggressions that come with it, it all was something new to me and Pattison really broadened my understanding in that way. Nowhere to Hide also features a Deaf character and once again it gives Pattison a chance to highlight new aspects to the usual "running through the woods"-vibe. But that, for me, was the main innovation of Nowhere to Hide, the moments in which I truly was gripped and fully invested. The moments in the nature reserve when our protagonists look for that elusive spot to feel safe in are the solid highs of this novel. The tension was exactly what I had hoped for, even if I would've never started running through a frozen forest myself. I don't run on a good day, let alone one on which one of my fellow-walkers has been shot. But I love to read about it!

Seven "friends", used very loosely here, gather at a nature reserve for a calm walk to see a murmuration. With the reserve empty of guests, it should be a lovely day, despite the tension running through the group since an unfortunate night at the pub. But then a gun shot raises the tension as one of the seven lies dead. Who killed them? Was it someone in the group? Or is there someone else in the reserve hunting them down? The blurb already kinda gives that away, even if it remains something of a question for most of the book. The gun shot occurs early on, so a good two-thirds of the book is the group making decisions on where to go, where to run. Some very odd choices are made by the characters and I must admit that at a certain point I lost track of how big this reserve was meant to be. Something that seemed to take hours before now took 3 lines, i.e. the distance's length depends on what the plot requires it to be. As we come closer to the ending more and more secrets surface for the reader and for some of the characters, successfully building the suspense. The ending mildly undermines this, with its twists and turns. While it does the trick of being shocking and surprising, it also doesn't fit to what has come before. So have we, as the reader, just not picked up on the right hints, or have there been no hints in order to surprise us later?

Nell Pattison comes up with amazing characters, full of conflicting desires and motivations. The group in Nowhere to Hide has all kinds of secrets hidden away and unraveling them is one of the things that should have been the main joy of the novel. We skip back and forth between them to track their progress and to have them reveal more and more of their secrets. And that narration is ... tricky. Because Pattison doesn't want to give away too much at once, the narration becomes highly unnatural, full of exposition. There is a lot of telling, not showing. There is a lot of background information that is provided that is relevant but delivered in such a way it kind of takes you out of the story. Which is a shame, because when the action is going, it is very gripping! I don't think this is solely a "flaw" of Nowhere to Hide, I think it happens in a lot of thrillers recently in order to get that big twist. I love a twist, but it should be earned by both the reader and the writer. I will absolutely be reading Nell Pattison's next book because I do love the inventive things she does. 

I give this book...

3 Universes!

Nowhere to Hide has a great set-up and a great set of characters. While sometimes the execution of these things doesn't work entirely smoothly, there is still a very good time to be had with Nowhere to Hide.