Book Review: Lost Sierra

Last week I read Lost Sierra by Amanda Traylor. It’s a thriller that follows Daphne Barlow. Daphne is 27 years old and the heiress to organic food brand. But months ago she left that life behind feeling like her parents had strayed from their original purpose with their company and become too preoccupied with money and fancy things. So she left the Bay Area where she grew up and moved to a small cottage in a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains and using her advanced degrees in health, holistic medicine, and homeopathic techniques she began working with locals as a holistic practitioner.

While she hasn’t won over the small town yet with her “hippie” ways, she has gained a small clientele. One of her patients/clients is John Sharpe, an army veteran in his 70s. He sees her regularly and while a bit gruff, he is one of her only friends in the town. When Sharpe begins acting strangely and then missing his appointment with her, Daphne becomes worried. She can’t find him and he’s not answering his phone. No one in town seems worried at all and keeps telling her he probably just left town for a trip or is on a “bender”. Determined to find her friend, Daphne continues to dig no matter how many people in town (pretty much everyone) warns her to stop. Daphne quickly learns that the small town she moved to that she thought would be a quaint town with friendly neighbors is actually a lot darker and not as friendly as she had hoped.

I liked Daphne and even though there were so many warnings that she shouldn’t keep searching for Sharpe, I could understand why she kept going. She felt like no one else in town cared and someone should be looking out for her friend. It was a little annoying (although maybe realistic because of her privileged upbringing) that she didn’t seem to grasp the fact that some of her actions put others in danger even when they would point blank tell her what she was doing and trying to involve them was putting them in danger lol.

Overall, I liked the book and it definitely had me hooked. I wanted to keep reading because I wanted to see how it would all turn out. I liked Daphne, but didn’t find any of the other characters that likable. A lot of the people in town who said they were her friends had this habit of yelling at her to stop digging and then turn around and be all sweet to her and ask if she found anything new and then a second later yell at her again. I did like the character of Logan, who was seriously morally grey, but he was so interesting to me!

Read this if you want a small town thriller that isn’t scary (I don’t do scary!).