The Divide by Nicholas Evans

I grabbed this one off my bookshelf while we were home and read it while lounging on my couch, a wonderful place to read!  This was a loaner from my mother-in-law. Isn't it wonderful to have close friends and relatives with libraries you can borrow from?

I really enjoyed the Horse Whisperer (another of Evan's books), and so I was interested to get into this one. It didn't disappoint me. In fact, it was pretty gripping from chapter one.

The story starts out in the pristine snowy mountains of Montana, a father and son on a enjoyable ski trip, one of the last of the season. Having a great time, but suddenly they make a grisly discovery, the body of a young woman buried in the snow and encased in ice.

The investigation ensues and the girl is quickly identified as Abbie Cooper, an eco-terrorist wanted for murder. But before Abbie took this dark path in life, she was the golden child of an upstanding family. The rest of the book spends it's pages exploring what brought about this change in Abbie and how and why her death occurred, delving into family dynamics and other relationships.

As I said, the story was pretty gripping and I enjoyed it. The characters were likable and believable. I liked it and I'd recommend it as a good read.

I had no quarrels with the story. My quarrels were were the author. Throughout the whole book there was something niggling at me that didn't sit right, and I finally figured out what. The whole thing was a little too close to the Horse Whisperer in that it's a  bitter New York bitch meets wholesome Montana cowboy thing. He wakes up her softer side and there are some warm tingles, etc etc. This story didn't focus on it, and really it was just hovering at the outskirts of the story, but it was still there, and really, I feel like if an author is truly a creative writer, they can avoid repeating things in unrelated stories. I mean, Montana's not the only state with snowy mountains and New York is not the only city with bitches! He could have changed the locations at the very least!

And then I found out that Evans lives in England! England???? Wow! I thought surely he must live in Montana, since he has used that state as the setting in the only two of his books I've read. Now I feel like I must read at least a third one, just to see if he continues his pattern.