This book was hands-down my favorite read last year! Violent and gruesome and lyrical and beautiful, this was a book that stayed with me long after I had finished reading.

Quotes:

“[A] near perfect first novel… [A] carefully crafted tale of mystery, ecology, backwoods, mysticism, and downright evil.“
- Shelf Awareness

“Gruesomely gorgeous… McLaughlin writes about the natural world with a casual lyricism and unselfconscious joy… Remarkable the kind of writing that makes me shiver.”
New York Times Book Review

“Bare skin is visceral, raw, and compelling – filled with sites, smells, and sounds truly observed. It’s a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional pros. There are very few first novels where I feel compelled to circle, brilliant passages, but James McLaughlin‘s writing had me doing just that.”
— Cc.J. Box

After the post office today to finally send on the two book mystery book box. This is not part of the two books, but when I am adding, as I have thought for months since reading this bookthat it’s one,
perryfran would enjoy… But I never got the round tuit to send it😉




Tracking # 9549 0161 8078 4093 358103

I look forward to seeing how you do like it~

Thanks for including this book as a RABCK. I'm sure I will enjoy it and looking forward to reading it soon.

The protagonist in this novel is Rice Moore who is on the run from a Mexican drug cartel. He was a drug mule for the Sinoloa cartel where his girlfriend ended up being tortured and killed. He has hopefully escaped this past by taking a job as the caretaker for a nature preserve in the mountains of Virginia. But he soon runs across someone who is poaching bears for their gall bladders and paws which are sold on the black market to China. In addition, Sara, the former caretaker of the preserve had been viciously assaulted and raped while she was serving there. So Rice is out to stop the bear poaching and he also wants to find out who attacked Sara. This all leads him to a local motorcycle gang but can he identify the attackers. On top of this, he is also on the lookout for someone from the cartel seeking vengeance against him.

I mostly enjoyed this intense thriller with its backdrop of Appalachian America and the various characters who make it their home. This included the poor young men with their racial prejudices who strived to make an impression just to join a biker gang; the local hunters and farmers with their groups of hounds; and the local law who treated Rice as an outsider. One thing I found a little disconcerting were instances where Rice goes into a fugue and I was sometimes unsure if what he saw was real or imagined. And then there is the Bear poaching. This is actually the third book I have read recently where bear poaching comes into play. The others were Cold by John Smolens and Mexican Hat by Michael McGarrity. This evidently is a problem as articles on the web show including this one published by the Los Angeles Times stating that "demand for bear parts in Asia and in Chinatowns around the world has fueled a bear-poaching industry."

Overall, I did find this book to be quite compelling and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks again erishkigal for sending this as a RABCK.

Sending this on to a reader in Alabama. Enjoy!

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