The River at Night: A Novel

Four not particularly adventurous thirty-something female friends go white-water rafting in the deep wilderness of Maine with an inexperienced but sexy young guide. What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything. I enjoyed the descriptions of nature and found the plot engaging.

As a woman, with great friends, I related easily to each character's personality, and how entwined these four women were. What a crazy, scary, vacation from hell, this book winds it's way through. Cancel your appointments!

Broken Homes, Unkept GardenFour good girl friends leave their dull jobs and once a year they seek adventure. They’ve gone sky diving and one summer, Pia, the most adventuresome girl rode an unbroken horse at a ranch in the West. As this story begins they are about to go rafting through mostly uncharted Maine wilderness.
But the girls get more adventure when they bargained for. Their raft is destroyed, their guide killed and they encounter a psycho mother and mute her son in the wilderness. Soon the women are struggling to survive surrounded by thirty miles of woodland and a a stream filled with dangerous currants.
It’s a hard book to like because of the violence, but the theme is friendship and overcoming handicaps like addictions, broken marriages, and cancer. I did like the strong characters, and their devotion to each other and to survival.

The description for this book appealed to me but unfortunately it didn't live up to its potential. The action sequences were well written and the pacing was great but the characters were one dimensional and flat. Add to that some of the unlikely scenarios presented and the whole thing adds up to a book that is mediocre at best. The POV character - Win - is more fleshed out than any of the other players, whose actions and reactions are largely inexplicable, even given the extreme circumstances. Rachel's rigid hard-line bad decisions seem to spring from nowhere and have bad consequences simply, it seems, to move the plot forward. Pia's interaction with Rory in this situation is ridiculous, and her response to the outrage of her unwilling audience is immature and (again) unfounded in any explanation of the character.

SPOILERS AHEAD: The scene at the roadside store that seemed to foreshadow the promised 'Deliverance'-style danger never bore fruit. Instead, the danger came from a cartoonish refugee from civilization and her mute son. Fortunately for our characters, Win's dead brother was mute so she knows sign language and this son - raised in the woods from the age 5 - miraculously has also learned to sign, so Win is able to establish a relationship with him, which she betrays in order to blindly follow Pia and Rachel into yet more danger.

This book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief and rational thought. I don't mind doing that when I'm reading science fiction or fantasy but in a thriller I expect at least a semblance of realism. I could also have lived with slightly less histrionic navel-gazing from Win about her cowardice if it would have given the author more room to build out the other characters to a point where their actions and responses made sense.

As others have mentioned, the book was a little slow to start but did pick up steam. I enjoyed the book - especially once it got going. The descriptions of the woods and what the women were going through were excellent. Yes, it was a bit far fetched that they'd run into some of what they did, but it was still a good read. I only have two complaints...#1, the four main characters weren't fleshed out. By the end, I still didn't really know much about any of them. And #2, I would have liked a chapter on their return. For example, them getting back to civilization and their recovery and how their families reacted to their return. The end reminded me of the ending of the movie 'Castaway.' We waited all that time for Tom Hanks' character to be rescued but then got to witness none of his actual rescue, recovery, etc. But, overall, a good book.

I very much enjoyed this book, could hardly put it down, but when I got to the end, well.......SPOILER ALERT!!! If you haven't read this book, then stop reading this review. If you have read it, maybe you agree with me. Such a strong, exciting story until Ms. Ferencik abruptly stopped telling it. It seemed as though she had no place to go, so, oh well, it's over. Stephen King does the same thing and this is not just my opinion. Reviewers often accuse him of getting bored with his current story, dying to get on with his next and just dropping the characters into a big hole. I guess it's not bad to be aligned with King, but I sure wish Ms. Ferencik had taken time to give us a satisfactory ending instead of plowing ahead with her new story.

Wow . . . great writing! Very, very descriptive. Although a lot didn't happen at the start of it (42% not the book), the writer still held my interest. Very descriptive - it's as if the reader is right there as a fly on the wall. There were some areas to which things don't seem plausible, however, it is a fiction book, and I don't get caught up in too much seriousness. The guide and one of the characters . . . ineffective, not plausible - he should have been older. - maybe late 20s would have been more believable. That part was not something that I could see a grown woman doing. Overall, good beach read! I enjoyed it!

Erica Ferencik's novel gives a nod to the Deliverance story, but takes off on its own write water whirl of an adventure. I've been in back country Maine and it's as wild as Ferencik describes. The river scenes are top notch, thrilling and frightening at their roughest .... seductive when all is flowing smoothly. She nails the details and keeps the reader tied in close to the unfolding story. Looking for an adventure? This is it.

Interesting for me to read a thrilling adventure written by a woman with women is the main characters. Unintentionally I tend to read me a lot male authors with stories that have men as the main characters. Really enjoyed this and will be more open minded when choosing what to read going forward.

This was an excellent story. Both well told and written. I hesitated to give all five stars due to the over use of the F word. Normally, I would not have finished this book early on. They were cussing up a storm before they were even in danger. Please loose the foul language. Your expertise in writing doesn't need the distraction.

I chose this book because the title captivated me and I totally enjoyed the setting. Been to backwoods Maine camping many years ago, though not so primitively. I've always enjoyed the outdoors along with camping, fishing, hunting, hiking and have seen locations similar to what this story had to offer, so I could picture it in my mind quite easily. The characters were quite believable and although I was hoping for the boy's reunion with the modern world, I didn't feel it was quite the salvation he needed. He was indeed more comfortable amongst the woods, but I was glad when he was able to put his mother's influence aside as he knew her ethics were not the right way to live. I just ate up the pages and would love more primitive settings such as this was. For some reason, I was reminded of the film "Deliverance" throughout..

This novel really does grab you by the eyeballs and never let go. Erica Ferencik's The River at Night starts slowly, like a pool at the top of a waterfall, before yanking you out into the flow. The last 100 pages are a feverish, wonderful blur, supported by Ferencik's superb descriptions of the natural wild. Some may have quibbles with a few of the characters, but that's not really the point. It's about endurance and the rush of adrenalin in the face of the unknown. And it's ultimately about a deep appreciation for life.

A great read, absolutely recommended. At the start Wini, the narrator, is settled into a daily routine and a life that seems OK on the surface, but we sense something's missing. In a burst of courage--almost daring herself--she agrees to a wilderness trip with friends and gets WAY more than she bargained for. As her 'trip of a lifetime' takes a disastrous turn (and then another and another...) Wini and her friends literally fight for their lives. Ferencik ups the ante on classic man-against-nature and the saying truly fits: I could not put it down.

Ferencik's writing is lean, clear, and powerful throughout. You enter a world where nature is beautiful but implacable and dangerous. When, inevitably, tensions arise among the group of friends, the danger rises to an almost impossible pitch. Ferencik includes a Thoreau quote at the start that sets the tone: "There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man."

I just finished reading “The River at Night” by Erica Ferencik and was totally blown away by her visceral writing, setting & characters. It was, in a word, FANTASTIC! Friends on a white water rafting adventure find themselves in dangerous territory. Winifred, Pia, Rachel and Sandra embark on their “vacation” having no idea what awaits them in the wilderness of Maine. Ms. Ferencik’s story-telling is first rate and will keep you enthralled until the very last paragraph. Want a good book to read? Look no further than “The River at Night.”

This book was awful. Very slow to start, and then when there was some action, it was very predictable. I regret sticking this book out and reading it to the end. The characters are shallow and the writing is sub par.

I found the action writing exciting and it moves very quickly. It was probably the only part of the book that I really enjoyed reading.
I try to avoid spoilers so if you don't want to know anything about what happens in this book other than the fact that the action is well-written, don't read any farther. If you take a child into the forest when the child is five years old , and the child then uses their ability to speak , how do you know the sign language that's recognized by all deaf people and teach that sign language to this child? It really isn't feasible that you would be able to do that. This is just one of many things that occur in this block that I find very unlikely and that make it difficult to want to finish the book although I did do so.
Do not read this book if you are looking for a logical sensible book. This just is not that novel. I wanted to be able to like this book. The reviews made it sound like a really fun read, which it was not .

Oh, what a cheesy book. What annoying characters! And why would Ms. Ferencik write a book about rafting if she doesn't know the difference between an oar and a paddle? There was enough plot to hold me until the end, but I was repeatedly kicked out of the story by one of the dozens of technical errors and logistical nonsense.

Exotic yet rustic, hillbilly yet sophisticated, gripping, compelling, marvelously descriptive, edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. A love song to nature, to friendships, to the timid and weak, and to the hero within each of us. I couldn't put it down, and now that I'm done reading it, I just can't seem to find anything to do that is as exciting as reading this book.

It's January and being stuck inside the house led me to choose The River at Night to accompany me on a trip. Ferencik's desciptions and pacing pull you into a world that you can see and hear and feel. When our heroine Win overcomes her fears and steps into the wild rush of water--first to overcome her fear of missing out on life's challenges and then to rise to the challenges she finds there--we're right there with her. Ferencik's storytelling is so vivid that you will check your T-shirt to see if it got soaked by the river! And the characters that Win meets seem to step into your room and talk; their voices have an authentic and sometimes chilling directness. I started reading on the plane and kept reading at my hotel then back on the plane again. Never thought about renting a movie cuz this book was so vivid and engrossing.

The characters were interesting, but not very fleshed out. I felt like the author told us what the characters were like (abused wife; recovering alcoholic; beautiful, confident ringleader; fearful and rejected narrator), rather than letting us discover their personalities and quirks in the process of the plot. I wanted to see more of her relationship to her brother, and her husband.

[Spoilers below, so stop now if you don't want to know!]

I thought the weakest part of the story was the characters they encountered in the woods. I just didn't buy the story of why they were there, or how they lived (and decorated their living area). I didn't find the mutilation of the boy believable, or the fact that he knew standard sign language. I didn't believe that he would so quickly turn against the only family he knew and instead go with total strangers.

I felt like the deaths of the characters were too quick and didn't have the impact they should have.

I don't think this is a book I would recommend. It read more like an outline for a movie script than a novel.

While I'm willing to suspend disbelief when I read a good book, this one was too unbelievable. Many inconsistencies with reality which I won't enumerate since it would spoil it for a potential reader who might like it more than I did.