4⭐
Genre ~ action and adventure romance
Setting ~ Nepal
Publication date ~ June 25, 2026
Est Page Count ~ 374 (67 chapters +e)
POV ~ dual 1st, but mostly told by the FMC with a few chapters from the MMC
Featuring ~ death, survival, violence, capture, torture, references to suicide
My review:
Introduction from the author:
To every woman who has ever longed for her own romantic adventure. It might not come while traipsing through the mountains, but it can arrive as a chance encounter on a city street, a lingering glance across a meeting room, or a stranger accidentally bumping into you at a bar. The adventure is falling in love.
Marie is a scientist that gets more than she bargained for when she heads through the mountains of Nepal searching for her beloved friend and coworker, Alex.
She hires Luke to fly her deep into the mountains where she hopes to find Alex. But when the plane goes down they find themselves trekking through the wilderness for a few weeks.
In the last few weeks, I’ve lost count of the slopes we’ve climbed, the ridges we’ve crossed, and the ravines we’ve skirted. In a landscape like this, it’s impossible to forget how small and fragile our lives really are.
I’m certainly not interested in ever being lost and trying to survive, but I thought Lara did a great job of making it feel realistic. Those parts felt a little long and slow moving to me, but well written nonetheless.
Marie and Luke butt heads constantly, giving us enemies vibes and tension up the yang. All side characters were pretty awful, but that’s to be expected based on the plot.
Overall, yes, there’s a touch of romance, but the main focus is an adventurous journey, survival and staying true to your beliefs even when your life is on the line. It’s perfectly titled, as well.
Add to your never ending TBR ~ goodreads
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.
Book blurb:
Romancing the Stone meets The Mountain Between Us in an enemies to lovers, grumpy sunshine romantic adventure set in the mountains of Nepal.
After losing his fiancée in a tragedy he can neither forgive nor forget, Luke Caldwell has spent years turning grief into vengeance. Now the hunter has become the hunted, forced to lie low in Nepal while the mountains punish him for surviving.
Dr. Marie Taylor is a talented biochemist who loves her work, despises the institute that pays her salary, and has purged her life of complications, namely people.
But her carefully structured world is shaken when she receives a distress signal from a colleague who vanished into the remote Himalayas of Nepal, taking with him the solution to a clandestine project.
Traveling to Nepal, Marie is forced to hire the only pilot reckless enough to attempt the Luke Caldwell, a man with murder in his eyes and a past he has no intention of sharing.
When their plane goes down, Luke and Marie must fight to stay alive in a perilously beautiful wilderness and face ruthless forces who will stop at nothing to seize the project.
Survival means trusting each other. For a man who’s sworn off love and a woman who doesn’t believe in it, trust may be the most impossible choice of all.
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