The Hike Review – Beginner’s Trek to Dull Thrills
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Four very unlikable people go up for a hike in the mountains, but only two make it back. What’s the story? Are the other two lost, dead, or murdered?
“The Hike” by Susi Holliday is a thriller set in the Swiss Alps, flitting between the past and the present. It begins with a bruised and battered American pair heading to a police station to report their two ‘friends’ missing. Except they’re not their friends – the group of four included two sisters and their respective husbands. We don’t find out until the climactic chapters which sister and husband survive the treacherous hike. The cops also have a hard time ascertaining the identities of the survivors, who act skittish and refuse to be taken to the hospital, instead insisting on assistance from embassy officials. “Red flag,” the cop in charge immediately thinks.
The hiking holiday is planned by Cat, a businesswoman, who pitches the international trip to her husband Paul and sister Ginny as a way to spend some quality time with each other and repair both their strained marriage and strained sibling relationship. The sisters are awful to each other, and their husbands are barely better. Cat’s husband is a shady character, who had to quit his job under suspicious circumstances, while Ginny’s husband Tristan is a wealthy cheating prick. Basically, they are all such unlikable characters that you wouldn’t care about who actually survives the hazardous hike.
One of the bigger disappointments in the thriller is the fact that both Cat and Ginny sound almost the same. Even though Cat is the older, more ‘hard-working’ sister, while Ginny is the spoiled sibling who lives off her rich husband, their characters feel like slight variations of each other. Both sisters sound entitled, bitter, selfish, self-centered, whiny and unbearable. The most interesting thing about the hike is the introduction of a fifth mysterious character, somebody who stalks the sisters silently through the mountains, like a predator intending on playing with its prey before killing it. This silent stalker’s true identity reveal was a bummer.
This is an easy-to-read book, with plenty of twists, most of which are either predictable or far too contrived. The pace is slow, the characters are irredeemable, and the climactic twist is just frustratingly disappointing. But if you’re looking for a quick thriller that’s not too complex, and allows you to switch off your brain a bit, you could give “The Hike” a chance.
Rating: 2 on 5. “The Hike” is also on Kindle Unlimited.
Also Read: Shubeik Lubeik Review: Fantastic Blend of Magical Realism (audio version below)
