The River at Night: A Novel

This story is non stop excitement and adventure. Erica created her characters wonderfully and unique! I loved this book and recommend it highly.

Pia, Sandra, Rachel & Wini met 15 years ago. Every year, since then, they get together for a girls getaway. This year, they're going hiking, camping & white-water rafting, in Maine. Their tour guide is a 20 year old college student. They're excited to explore one of the least traveled wild rivers & see places no one's ever seen before. And, they're also nervous about being in the middle of nowhere for 5 days. None of them have been this far from civilization.The river is swollen, churning & alive. Rory (their guide) spent about an hour teaching them the do's & don'ts. They have faith in his ability to harness the raging waters. It's an awesome real-life experience, until Rory drowns & they lose the raft which has everything they need to survive; water, tents, food, maps, etc. Exhaustion & shock begin to show on all of them. How will they make it through the night with no light or source of warmth? They're lost in the wilderness & they need help. The closest town is 30 miles away.They see smoke in the night sky & they climb toward the smell. They spot a woman & her feral son who are living off the grid in a makeshift cabin in the woods surrounded by the heads of animals dripping gore. She is a total freakazoid. She tells her son he has to kill the 4 women. This is when their all-too-real nightmare begins. Do they make it out alive?

The description for this book appealed to me but unfortunately it didn't live up to its potential. The action sequences were well written and the pacing was great but the characters were one dimensional and flat. Add to that some of the unlikely scenarios presented and the whole thing adds up to a book that is mediocre at best. The POV character - Win - is more fleshed out than any of the other players, whose actions and reactions are largely inexplicable, even given the extreme circumstances. Rachel's rigid hard-line bad decisions seem to spring from nowhere and have bad consequences simply, it seems, to move the plot forward. Pia's interaction with Rory in this situation is ridiculous, and her response to the outrage of her unwilling audience is immature and (again) unfounded in any explanation of the character.SPOILERS AHEAD: The scene at the roadside store that seemed to foreshadow the promised 'Deliverance'-style danger never bore fruit. Instead, the danger came from a cartoonish refugee from civilization and her mute son. Fortunately for our characters, Win's dead brother was mute so she knows sign language and this son - raised in the woods from the age 5 - miraculously has also learned to sign, so Win is able to establish a relationship with him, which she betrays in order to blindly follow Pia and Rachel into yet more danger.This book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief and rational thought. I don't mind doing that when I'm reading science fiction or fantasy but in a thriller I expect at least a semblance of realism. I could also have lived with slightly less histrionic navel-gazing from Win about her cowardice if it would have given the author more room to build out the other characters to a point where their actions and responses made sense.

I don't even know where to start. I'm not an outdoorsy person. I have a phobia of water that is over my head. I can't swim. I have no desire to camp out or commune with nature. I would never in a million years even consider going white water rafting. I would never survive in the wilderness. And this book just reinforced and justified all of that. But I do love to read survival stories, and this one is absolutely gripping. Not just the story, though. I loved the author's voice, her evocative way with words.The narration is in first person POV by Wini, the most reluctant member of the trip. She'd much prefer to bask on a beach in the sun somewhere, but Pia, the natural leader of the group, enthusiastically drags them all to Maine, where they meet up with their guide for the trip. All four of the women are beautifully written, as are the descriptions of the terrain over which they must first hike, and of course the main character of the story, the vast, tumbling river.The river isn't the only danger the group faces over three long days. But I feel like anything else I say would be a potential spoiler. So I'll just say this book is terrifyingly terrific.

This book was a page-turner. Ferencik’s writing was simple and pulsating. I would say I couldn’t put the book down and couldn’t stop thinking about the plot for about 120 pages.The gist of the book is four female friends take an annual ladies trip. This time they chose a semi-dangerous white-water rafting exposition in the backcountry of Maine. What could go wrong?The detail and imagery of the natural environment in which these women find themselves is spellbinding. However, I must say there are lines in which we never really find out what the author meant, sentences that never found their ending.It was a good book but not a great one. The natural dangers were more real and frightening than anything else. Maybe that was the point Ferencik was trying to make all along. All in all it is worth the read but I was left with a “meh” aftertaste. Maybe this says more about me as the reader rather than the book itself but the climax was not enough adrenaline for me. I expected more of a dark twist. After all who knows what is watching in those woods.

This book transported me to the Maine wilderness. The sense of place was sustained throughout, with descriptions of the woods, river and rapids contributing to a ever growing sense of foreboding and dread. At nights the sounds could be eerie. By daylight there were areas of great beauty. Some have compared the book to a female Deliverance, and I agree. Four middle aged women have been friends for years. Each year Pia, adventurous and athletic, plans and books a trip for her three friends, a time of bonding and catching up on their disparate lives. This time it is to be a 5 day whitewater rafting adventure. Not the type of getaway the others would have chosen. None of them has done this type of sport before and are not prepared for wilderness camping or rafting. They agree so not to let Pia down and seem intimidated by her. Winifred, who narrates the story is apprehensive, a worrier and feels they don't know enough about what to expect. She has a dull, mundane job, her beloved brother has died, and her husband has left her. She agrees on the trip with misgivings because she does not want to be left behind and alone. Also on the trip is Rachel, a nurse and former alcoholic who is hot tempered and abrasive, and Susan, a sweet fragile woman who is a cancer survivor and in an unhappy marriage. They shop for expensive camping equipment, and it seems they have sufficient supplies for a month camping in an African jungle. It seems Pia while arranging the trip had another sort of adventure in mind, like sexy time with the 20 year old, hot, dreadlocked, muscular river guide. After the setup which introduces the characters, thus begins a pulse pounding, edge of your seat, relentless thriller. At the start of the river adventure, there is a terrible accident. The raft capsizes, and they lose their guide, the raft and all of their equipment. They are left stranded and alone in the wilderness. Nothing else could go wrong, could it? At night they see a campfire on a nearby mountain, and proceed towards it expecting rescue. The women must gather all their inner resources in order to survive. Winifred discovers strength of mind and fortitude within herself which she never knew existed.

Der Beginn ist etwas vorhersehbar, umso überraschter war ich dann über die Wendung in der Mitte des Buches. Konnte es im Urlaub innerhalb eines Tages durchlesen, ohne mich anstrengen zu müssen - also wirklich spannend.

'The River At Night' is a pacy, panic-driven story exploring the isolation of the vast wilderness on a trip of a lifetime, where quartet of friends minutely scrutinise themselves and each other when it all goes belly-up during a perilous, life-changing ordeal.Any ‘break from civilisation’ tale is a fascinating subject as you can discover a lot about the characters from their actions, or lack of. Bizarrely, the allure of the feral outdoors offers temptation for these ladies hoping to inject something into their lives. But not everyone is totally committed to the challenge and it takes encouragement to mentally gear up for the white water rafting experience of a lifetime. Ha! What could possibly go wrong?!The situation is not helped by their charming guide who is half their age with double the enthusiasm. Despite his qualifications and the aptly fearsome names for the rapids he plans to navigate, some of the group remain cautious. Soon the novelty of how they look in their orange life vests seems insignificant when they are dazed and dishevelled as a result of unexpected events.Things escalate fairly quickly and I could feel the wild breathing down the necks of the amateurish pack. Familiar urban noises replaced by the snap of a twig, eerie solitude or creepy-crawlies striving to break the group en-masse. Spats and sulks ensue, their friendship recoils, and that promise of a wonderful experience runs for the hills with sense and reason following close behind.The ordinariness of their ‘are we nearly there yet’ travels compared with the physically and psychologically diminished group they become is grimly compelling. Reading this in a single afternoon was like switching a film on the box where you might have to suspend belief in a few places and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen, but you just can’t tear yourself away from the screen to make a cuppa.So yes. I was hypnotised by 'The River At Night' and the threats from a remote, cinematic landscape, the forced sense of adventure, and an undiluted fear that can drive people close the edge. I liked it, a lot.(I received a copy of this title from the publisher with my thanks and it’s my pleasure to provide this unbiased review. But I also purchased a Kindle copy, as it's a terrific read!)

The book is not as simple as the synopsis says! The writing is magnificent so the ordeal faced by the four friends in the wilderness feels very real and you can actually feel the water spraying and the river roaring. Nail-biting moments and spectacular cinematic observations of nature make you feel like you are physically present and experience the adventure. The story progresses at a steady pace and keeps you at the edge of your seat. A fast read because you won't be able to part with the book!

its good. a little predictable in places and i guess there will always be a tendency to compare it to deliverance and i think robert b. parker wrote a similar book about a bunch of guys from boston going into the wilds. i liked the four girls, all different, all interesting. ms. ferencik writes really well about rafting, the wild river and the surrounding forest. made it seem real. no super hero's, the girls did what they had to to survive. look forward to reading the writers next book.