I received a sample for this review/feature. Opinions expressed are my own.
I have always been curious about our northernmost state….Alaska. It seems like such a mystical place, a far stretch from sunny Florida where I live. I especially love reading books that take place in a world so unlike my own. I was immediately drawn to The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury because of the book cover and blurb.? I was quickly hooked in the first chapter and rapidly finished the whole book during my down time during spring break.
A natural born trapper and hunter raised in the Alaskan wilderness, Tracy Petrikoff spends her days tracking animals and running with her dogs in the remote forests surrounding her family’s home. Though she feels safe in this untamed land, Tracy still follows her late mother’s rules: Never Lose Sight of the House. Never Come Home with Dirty Hands. And, above all else, Never Make a Person Bleed.
But these precautions aren?t enough to protect Tracy when a stranger attacks her in the woods and knocks her unconscious. The next day, she glimpses an eerily familiar man emerge from the tree line, gravely injured from a vicious knife wound?a wound from a hunting knife similar to the one she carries in her pocket. Was this the man who attacked her and did she almost kill him? With her memories of the events jumbled, Tracy can?t be sure.
Helping her father cope with her mother’s death and prepare for the approaching Iditarod, she doesn?t have time to think about what she may have done. Then a mysterious wanderer appears, looking for a job. Tracy senses that Jesse Goodwin is hiding something, but she can?t warn her father without explaining about the attack?or why she’s kept it to herself.
It soon becomes clear that something dangerous is going on . . . the way Jesse has wormed his way into the family . . . the threatening face of the stranger in a crowd . . . the boot-prints she finds at the forest’s edge.
Her family is in trouble. Will uncovering the truth protect them?or is the threat closer than Tracy suspects?
Born in Illinois, Jamey Bradbury has lived in Alaska for fifteen years, leaving only briefly to earn her MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Winner of an Estelle Campbell Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters, she has published fiction in Black Warrior Review, Sou?wester, and Zone 3, and she has written for the Anchorage Daily News, TheBillfold.com, and storySouth. Jamey lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury definitely has that coming of age feel I love so much in a good book. Tracy is about to turn 18 and finally is able to compete in the Iditarod…against her father’s wishes. She instead trains at night in secret. One night she is knocked unconscious but she can’t tell her father or she will have to explain whey she was out in the woods. A teenager of that age wants so much to be a grown up but still lacks the experiences to make adult choices so we are intertwined into her story of living in the Alaskan wilderness and the growing up she will quickly endure. It is not the type of book I normally grab to read during spring break but I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I bonded with Tracy and thus I could hardly put the book down. A fabulous thriller that takes you on a ride through the Alaskan wilderness.
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