Review: Untraceable (The Nature of Grace #1) by S.R. Johannes

Summary

16-year-old Grace has lived in the Smokies all her life, patrolling with her forest ranger father who taught her about wildlife, tracking, and wilderness survival.

When her dad goes missing on a routine patrol, Grace refuses to believe he’s dead and fights the town authorities, tribal officials, and nature to find him.

One day, while out tracking clues, Grace is rescued from danger by Mo, a hot guy with an intoxicating accent and a secret. As her feelings between him and her ex-boyfriend get muddled, Grace travels deep into the wilderness to escape and find her father.

Along the way, Grace learns terrible secrets that sever relationships and lives. Soon she’s enmeshed in a web of conspiracy, deception, and murder. And it’s going to take a lot more than a compass and a motorcycle (named Lucifer) for this kick-butting heroine to save everything she loves.

Rating

★★★☆☆

Review

Oh, Untraceable. How I wish I loved this book. The blurb was really interesting when I read it a couple of months ago and agreed to review this novel. But I didn't read the blurb before I picked it up and started reading. That was a big problem. I think that subconsciously, I do this on purpose (not reading the blurb before I start reading). I like picking a book up, not knowing ANYTHING about what is going on and being pleasantly surprised by everything going on. Most of the time, this works out ... I don't have any preconceived thoughts or opinions about what is going on. But this time it backfired ... dude, I'm telling you ... I had NO CLUE as to how old the main character, Grace, was. In the very beginning, I thought that she was a teenager but then the further I got into Untraceable, I really started to think she was in her 20's. At one point, I even flipped back to the cover to see if it could give me a hint and the picture of the chick on the cover looks like she is in her 20's as well. Yes, I could have just read the blurb but I wouldn't let myself and for all I know, her age could have been disclosed in the first paragraph but I somehow missed it and I didn't go back to check. 

I guess what I'm getting at is that it didn't read like a teenagers thoughts ... it was oddly a mix of both. To be honest, I really didn't even like the main character. Hey, not liking a character isn't necessarily a bad thing - sometimes that's the intention. But I don't think that it was this time. Another piece of honesty ... this main character was a little shit. She had nothing but snarky and rude comments for her mother and pretty much everyone around her and that really bothered me. Now, I have been lucky enough to not have lost one of my parents. Maybe this was a coping mechanism but all of the hatred just felt completely unnecessary. It really turned me off early on. 

All of that being said, there were a few unexpected twists and turns that I enjoyed quite a bit and that kept me reading to the end of the book. Thank goodness that they happened because if the inner monologue that was going on in the beginning was how the rest of the book was written, I would have put this one down long ago. 

I know that this review sounds super negative but I did like Untraceable. I'd be interested to see what happens in the next installment because it seemed like everything was closed up pretty tightly barring one thing and I kinda want to know how that would play out in another novel. 

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