Ava Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. She is an American-born novelist based in England, and a former crime reporter and communications consultant. The Hiding Season is her latest book, described as a psychological thriller with an ending that will take your breath away.
This is my first time reading Ava Glass or A.C. Glass as The Hiding Season has been published under. And straight up I have to say, I enjoyed it immensely.
The hook, ‘She’s seen too much, now there’s nowhere to hide,’ has a hint of ambiguity that would appear at odds with the title. After all, The Hiding Season must have some type of concealment in it. Add in the idea of a season and you’re immediately aware that someone will be fair game for hunting.
The Hiding Season
The story begins with Maya side-swiped by the breakup of her marriage. Told as a first-person narrative, we’re drawn in to her bewilderment and sadness. And her desire to put as much distance between herself and her cheating husband as she can. Her focus is to make sense of the upheaval released on the life she was satisfied with and though settled and fulfilling.
She ends up in a small town in Montana and running out of money and options, takes a job caretaking a luxury ski resort in the Rocky mountains that tower over the town. It’s quiet and empty in the summer months and seems to be the perfect place to lick her wounds. That is until she finds a dead body in a supposedly empty house.
A dead body that has disappeared by the time she has alerted the authorities and returns with them to the scene of the crime.
Thus, Maya gets drawn in to a deadly game being played out between the authorities and organised crime.
She is the only witness. The only one, outside the murderer, who knows a crime has been committed. And as such, Maya has to be eliminated by one side and found and supposedly, kept safe by the other.
Almost at once she’s asking herself, who can she trust? She barely trusts herself. And the man who wants to protect her is giving off seriously mixed vibes.
Ava Glass
Ava Glass draws us into Maya’s world gently and questioningly, ratcheting up and releasing the tension incrementally until one is so invested in Maya’s dilemmas that one can’t put the book down.
The story ebbs and flows as she builds her life only to have it snatched away, again and again. We’re with her all the way. We root for her as she finds a resilience she doesn’t know she possesses. We cheer her on as she learns to trust her instincts. And we’re there, at one with her, when she realizes that if she wants to live life on her terms, it’s up to herself to do what has to be done.
And readers, the sting in the tail of this thoroughly enjoyable story is too delicious to give away.
You’ll just have to read it for yourselves to find out.
(c) M A Purcell
Order your copy online here.
And read more Crime and Thriller book reviews on Writing.ie here.
