Early Reader Review: The Starlight Claim by Tim Wynne-Jones

Source: From Librarything Early Reviewers Program and Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review. 

The Starlight Claim by Tim Wynne-Jones
Publisher:  Candlewick Press
Publication Date:  September 10, 2019

 

Format: Paperback ARC

Rating:








Goodreads Synopsis: 

Fast-paced, evocative, and intensely suspenseful, Tim Wynne-Jones's latest psychological thriller finds a teenager setting his wits against the frigid wilderness and a menacing crew of escapees.
Four months after his best friend, Dodge, disappeared near their families' camp in a boat accident, Nate is still haunted by nightmares. He'd been planning to make the treacherous trek to the remote campsite with a friend -- his first time in winter without his survival-savvy father, Burt. But when his friend gets grounded, Nate secretly decides to brave the trip solo in a journey that's half pilgrimage, half desperate hope he will find his missing friend when no one else could. What he doesn't expect to find is the door to the cabin flung open and the camp occupied by strangers: three men he's horrified to realize have escaped from a maximum-security prison. Snowed in by a blizzard and with no cell signal, Nate is confronted with troubling memories of Dodge and a stunning family secret, and realizes that his survival now depends on his wits as much as his wilderness skills. As things spiral out of control, Nate finds himself dealing with questions even bigger than who gets to leave the camp alive.

Review: 
Nate and his best friends have been planning a trip up to the cabin for months, but not one of them is dead and the other cannot come. Nate decides to go it alone, and in the process finds himself in the middle of a prison escape. When he arrives at the cabin, there are men already there and he is now in danger. Nate must fight for his survival in the cold months and try not to be found.

This was a very interesting book. Nate is still tormented by losing his best friend in a horrible boating accident and sees him in nightmares and hallucinations pretty often. He feels somewhat responsible for his friends death and cannot shake that feeling. There was a lot of these hallucinations -come to life in the story and it was a bit weird but it put some things into perspective I guess.  I found the survival of Nate through this ordeal with the prison escapees to be a pretty good story but the addition of the PTSD over the friend was a bit much. It feels overly sophisticated for what it needs to be, then again I have not read anything else by this author and that might just be his style. 

Final thoughts - I think this was a good adventure, a bit of a coming of age tale, of a boy in the wilderness trying to survive, but done in a way that is a bit more complex. I think Young Adult readers will be the right age group for this one, especially those that like books about the outdoors.