After her mother dies unexpectedly, Jess is left to live with her estranged father who may be involved in an antigovernment conspiracy in the Alaskan wilderness -- only it's not the Alaskan wilderness after all, but a remote piece of wild in middle-of-nowhere Canada. In dual timelines, Jess shares how she came to the cabin in the woods and what happened after her father, too, met his demise without warning. Now left to fend for herself in unfamiliar lands with no wilderness survival skills and no one but a dog for company and the rest of that conspiracy group may be after her.

This stunning survival novel is gripping at every turn, with a plot that truly leaves the reader wondering whether or not Jess will make it to the end of the pages alive. With a journal style narration, the possibility of Jess's own death remains strong throughout the book. Marshall underlines the immediacy and urgency of Jess's situation with a harrowing plot, throwing curveball after curveball at Jess, who knows that with winter approaching, her survival is unlikely at best.

Alongside a great external plot is Jess's character development, which is easy to follow for readers who prefer more marked development while maintaining high interest. Jess is a consistently refreshing character with bare motivations and drivers that, while not always necessarily pleasant, are always interesting and strike a note of realism readers will appreciate for its reflection of themselves.

While I didn't do any sort of fact-checking, the events and circumstances of the book seemed reasonably plausible enough. Despite the extreme things Jess experiences, none of them seemed impossible, which helped elevate the stakes and make the book exciting as a whole.

With little to interfere with the raw plot that is the survival novel, readers might expect I Am Still Alive to be a slow read. And to some degree, it is. The book is a deliberate one that is more about Jess's development than it is her story of trying to survive the Canadian wilderness and a group of radical antigovernment conspirers, but Jess's internal story is so thoughtful and interesting that it truly grips the reader from beginning to end.

Readers of survival fiction will eat this up, as will anyone who simply enjoys a good story with solid writing. Don't miss this one.