Jane Harper is an author new to me, but The Survivors was a decent read to get me through a few rough days. The book revolves around Kieran, a new father coming back to his hometown with his girlfriend and their infant daughter. There is a great trauma and tragedy that haunts this town from Kieran’s past. Though the writing style could have used some finer editing and sharpening, the characters and narrative piqued my interest through the end of the novel. The mystery and suspense is gradually built up over the course of the book and while it isn’t a particularly twisty novel, it is one that kept me reading to find out the end.

The narrative is fairly simple, and not much happens other than the main mystery, which is inevitably tied to events that happened in the town’s and protagonist’s past. We get snippets from the past interweaved with the modern timeline, which was confusing and jerky at times. Harper’s style also tends to be a bit too… descriptive? I’m not sure how to describe it, but it is way too wordy and tends to meander on occasion. Something interesting might happen, and then there will be a few pages of something unrelated or a random thought Kieran has, which may or may not be related. Maybe that was a way to foreshadow, but I didn’t find it effective.

The characters manage to be interesting, even though they could have been developed a bit further. I don’t really get why there is a baby in the story—every now and then, we get the characters interacting with her and remembering that she exists, but I don’t really get ‘parent’ vibes from the main couple. Many of the locals also were one-dimensional, though they played important roles in the plot. I didn’t really get a sense of who Mia was, for example, aside from her being a sidelined careerist. Kieran is perhaps the most interesting since we got to see his inner thoughts and perspective the most. One aspect I enjoyed was the way that certain characters can be grey, and how the characters’ perceptions of each other might be colored by time or their closeness.

What I really enjoyed in this novel, and what made it so compelling, was its themes of trauma and how a community heals as well as keeps secrets. What may seem harmless on the surface might not be in reality, and a town might go to some crazy lengths to keep its reputation. Kieran repeatedly has to struggle with his conception of his deceased older brother, whom he and his family idolized. The book jacket calls this book ‘atmospheric’, and I think it is, at least in part. I have never been to Australia or stayed longterm in a tiny seaside town (with all those secrets), but I got a hint of what it must be like in this novel. The backbiting, neighborly concern, the newcomer disrupting the status quo… it’s all there.

The mystery is a slow buildup for sure. Try the first 50 pages or so, because it isn’t that gripping in the beginning—and the writing style makes it seem even more clunky than it needs to be. The ending isn’t a shocking twist, but it’s not really the surprise (or lack thereof) that made it enjoyable for me—rather, it was the satisfaction of seeing the various pieces of the puzzle come together and seeing the overall picture. For a quick mystery book, it fits the bill—but based on the writing style, I’m not sure I’ll give Harper another chance unless the blurb is especially intriguing.