Anna Downes - Red River Road

Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, her free-spirited younger sister, Phoebe, vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNAevidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her.
Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy retraces her sister’s steps, searching for any clues the police may have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and how dangerous were they?
And then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, who is on the run from her own dark past. Katy realizes that Beth might be her best—and only—chance of finding the truth, and the two women form an uneasy alliance to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this wild, beautiful, and perilous place.
Anna Downes takes us on a twist-filled journey into the dark side of solo female travel, in this gripping novel that explores what drives us to keep searching for those we have lost, the family bonds that can make or break us, and the deception of memory.

Comment: I saw this book being recommended in a list of books that were set in Australia. That country does have some allure to me, and the blurb of this book seemed promising, thus why I've added it to the TBR list. Now, it was finally time to read it.

In this story Katy Sweeney is about to start a solo trip in a van, just like her sister Phoebe did the year before, until she went missing. Katy is still grieving, for the authorities have closed the case, and she decides to re do her sister's steps and journey, following her sister's Instagram, believing she would find some kind of clue that could lead them to find Phoebe.

Although her start is rocky, things change when Beth, a young woman suddenly appears in her van, apparently running from trouble, and Katy decides to help her. They talk and agree on traveling together, but as the journey goes on we learn Beth is hiding something she regrets in her past and Katy sometimes acts weird. What is really going on, and is there nay real hope of finding Phoebe?

This is the first book I try by this author and if not for the site recommendation, I probably would not have heard of Anna Downes. Now, however, I'll investigate further because this story was, indeed, quite the journey!

First, let me say I find these stories where someone travels alone to be quite hard to grasp because I am quite lazy and fearful to go on my own somewhere I don't know already. What if something goes wrong? What if I get lost? Therefore, reading this story was quite an adventure and Katy also seemed to be grieving, to be vulnerable... my imagination went to the idea that something would happen to her, even more so when Beth shows up and you just know she's hiding secrets. To add to this notion, Katy's chapters were in the first person and Beth's in third.

The plot is simple, in the sense the two new friends are traveling now together and Katy is looking for clues to point her in the direction where her sister went. Beth finds it a little odd that Katy doesn't do a few things anyone with a phone would nowadays, but she thinks this might be related to the trauma and the worry, the clear sign Katy isn't in her best... but at the same time this is hinted at, we slowly learn what Beth is hiding too, and also that other lone women traveling were reported missing.

The plot reached a place that I was wondering if Beth was more culpable of something related to the missing women than she let on, or if Beth and Katy were moving towards a fate where they couldn't help themselves as Phoebe didn't, or as other women apparently didn't either. While all this is ongoing, we see from Phoebe's Instagram that she had many followers,including one that is constant and who writes seemingly innocent comments but which can be seen as threatening. This was quite the captivating read, with many new situations being mentioned.

Then, something major is shared. I won't spoiler it but let me say the author must have done some interesting research in preparing for this story, and not only on solo women traveling statistics. I think the tactic of presenting the information in slow stages, in a slightly oppressive way, as if something bad could happen at any time, or a new terrible fact would be mentioned soon, made for a very engrossing but stressful reading. When some explanations come, I must say that some did seem so unlikely... I mean, they aren't common, that's for certain, and not hearing about it often makes them sound less likely, isn't it?

I think this was a goo read for me, but I can see why it wasn't for some readers. The final explanation was too uncommon, and the pace sometimes felt a bit too slow. There are several red herrings and situations which feel unfairly described once we know the twist. I think the author did it well, but perhaps a different choice would have helped. It also felt a bit too convenient how Beth and Katy met and Beth's real role in the big scheme of things of what happened to Phoebe.

I think this was a challenging story, with enough elements to make it engrossing. Yes, as often happens, I'd change some things, but overall this was a good one.

Grade: 8/10