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Thursday, 9 October 2025

Rainforest by Michelle Paver

 Is This Mutton reviews Rainforest by best selling author Michelle Paver


Dear friends. Today's book spotlight is on a novel that sends chills down the spine.  Author Michelle Paver has done it again with another brilliantly researched book that is both eerie and thought provoking.

A few years I read her book Thin Air, about a mountaineering expedition that went wrong. I still think about it to this day.  I immediately read her books Dark Matter and Wakenhyrst.

Several years have elapsed since the last book.  Rainforest is a stunner, and gets 5 stars from me.

Join me on today's blog tour to learn more about the story and the author. 


PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

The virgin rainforest seems a paradise to Englishman Simon Corbett. A last chance to salvage his career. A final refuge from a terrible secret.

But the jungle is no Eden. It hides secrets of its own. It does not forgive.

As Simon is drawn deeper into its haunted shadows, he learns to his horror that the past will not stay buried. For there are places in the forest where the line between the living and the dead is thinner than the skin of water.


MY THOUGHTS

Michelle Paver excels at creating unease and dissonance in dangerous environments, her protagonists often being stiff upper lipped British men. 

Rainforest is no exception. Simon is an unlikable character hoping to rescue his etymologist career by going to a remote research site in the rainforest and making a rare discovery. His colleagues are cut from the same cloth, all of them with undesirable secrets.

Simon is trying to escape from an obsession. He becomes convinced he needs to confront it head on by taking a hallucinogenic concoction used by the Mayans for centuries. But the Shaman, whose brother died in violent circumstances, refuses to help yet another white outsider.

The tension and terror builds as Simon loses his way and becomes lost in the rainforest. Paver somehow makes the supernatural appear normal, while the normal - the ferocious weather, the wild animals, the deadly insects - are also intent on preying on Simon.

Meticulously researched and sent a shiver down the spine.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR



Born in Malawi to a Belgian mother and a father who ran the tiny Nyasaland Times, Michelle Paver movedto the UK when she was three. She was brought up in Wimbledon and, following a Biochemistry Degree from Oxford University, she became a partner in a big City law firm. She gave up the City to follow her long-held dream of becoming a writer. Successfully published as an adult author, the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (“Wolf Brother”) were her first books for younger readers, followed by her brilliant 5-part series set in the bronze age, Gods and Warriors. On the adult side, her first ghost story, Dark Matter, was a UK bestseller and won massive praise from reviewers and readers alike, as did her supernatural novels, Thin Air and Wakenhyrst.



FOR MORE INFORMATION


michellepaver.com
Instagram: @michelle.paver

Thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours, the author and the publisher, Orion Books, for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

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