Thank you, NetGalley, John Teschner, and Forge Books for the opportunity to read this book! It releases on June 28th, 2022.

Project Namahana by John Teschner is a thriller revolving around corporate greed. On the island of Kaua’i, there have been mysterious deaths and disappearances. There are corporate farms on this island and two men, Bernt and Lindstrom, seem to suspect that they are behind the deaths. However, investigating this corporation will not be easy. The locals are scared because the corporation–Benevoment, will stop at nothing to cover their tracks. But if someone doesn’t expose them, more people will die.

The premise of this book is SOOOOO GOOD!! I really, really, wanted to love it. It took a while to get into the story, for me, it was at least 5-6 chapters. I had no idea what was going on for a while but I pushed through. There are some good descriptions of the island, but some of the other descriptions were so unnecessary. They would take me out of the story too because they just didn’t need to be there. The dialogue was very much the same way. It was very stilted with no emotion. Now for the characters… I know their names, but I can’t tell you about them besides what they do in the story. There is no characterization. They are just names on a page.

BUT. As I said the premise of this book is great. The author really shines a light on corporate greed and the dangers that they bring to the environment and to the locals. Because of their wealth, it is easy for them to cover up any mistakes or silence them. Since this book takes place on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, it really dives into how these corporations came in and destroyed the land and the people, and the evils of colonization. He did a great job at including the impacts on the locals, as well as their culture. I truly wish this book had better “bones” so to speak because this would have been a phenomenal book otherwise. I would normally rate this 2 stars, but I decided to bump it up because I enjoyed the premise so much.