Book Review: The Hike by Lucy Clarke

Liz, Joni, Maggie and Helena have been best friends ever since they were kids attending the same secondary school in their English town. Throughout the years, as they’ve grown into adulthood and gone off in different life directions, they’ve done their best to not only stay in touch but to support each other through life’s travails. A large part of this includes going for an annual vacation together, just the four of them, to recapture the energy and joy of their youth.

This year, it’s Liz’s turn to choose their holiday destination. As a recent convert to the benefits of walking, she decides she want to drag everyone on a grueling four-day hiking trip up a Norwegian mountain:

Liz being Liz, she wanted to understand the physiological benefits of walking, so she’d dived into the research. She discovered that regular walking improved the immune system, lowered cholesterol, and strengthened feelings of well-being. She shared these findings with her patients. “I’m prescribing you a daily walk.” It was simple, free, doable for most. Life-changing in some cases.

 

Right now, Liz needed life-changing.

Liz is a GP in the very same town she grew up in. She married her childhood sweetheart and has twin children, but has grown dissatisfied with the sameness of her everyday life. While in the full throes of an early mid-life crisis, she asked her husband for a trial separation. To her horror, he readily agreed. Given her recently developed belief in the curative powers of walking, she’s decided that a challenging hike in less than optimal conditions is the perfect way to sort out her troubles and regain clarity.

Her friends are both far less athletic and far less enthused, wistfully mentioning previous holidays relaxing on the beach. Single career girl Helena has at least packed appropriately, even as she grieves her late mother and worries about potential changes in her own daily life. Divorced mother Maggie is panicking at leaving her daughter Phoebe with her estranged ex for the first time ever, and has done even less than Helena to get physically fit enough for the hike. Rock star Joni is still on tour, but an epiphany regarding her self-destructive lifestyle has her abandoning her commitments in order to surprise the others at the Norwegian lodge from where they’ll be starting out.

As the women set out on their hike, old resentments begin to simmer back up to the surface, while new and unexpected dangers come to the fore. The locals are not slow to warn them of the potential hazards of their route:

“Is Blafjell…dangerous?” Maggie asked.

 

“All mountains can be,” Liz said crisply.

 

Vilhelm nodded at Liz, then made to move away as if dismissed.

 

“But there’s something about Blafjell, isn’t there?” Maggie called after him.

 

Vilhelm hesitated. Quietly, he said, “Some locals think that there is…an energy about the place. A sense of something larger than us.” He spoke only to Maggie. “A vibration, if you will. This one knows it. Hackles go up. Ears pinned right back. Starts to whine. Dogs can sense the other.”

 

Maggie’s skin grew cool. “The other?”

Vilhelm looked directly at her, his gaze clear and intense. “Something beyond the limits of our understanding.”

Even with shadows of the supernatural and the much more concrete concerns of bad weather dogging their heels, they press on. Never mind that another hiker, who looks eerily like one of their own party, disappeared here almost exactly a year ago. Perhaps the greatest danger to their friendships, however, lies in the dark secrets they’ve been keeping from one another.

This suspenseful novel chronicles what happens when people are thrown into physically and emotionally dire situations they’re in no way prepared for, as the hazards of the trail combine with the sinister intent of all too human antagonists to challenge our four friends beyond their greatest limits. Not all of them will survive, but this page-turner deftly chronicles the fallout as it navigates back and forth through time and space while racing to its thrilling peak.