Fairly good mystery. Thoroughly suspenseful even though I thought towards the end the author stretched credulity a bit. Like, when the women all decide to go back to the house where they were imprisoned. Not sure I quite believe they would be all willing to do that, especially since it was so obviously a trap. And why didn't anyone think it a good idea to maybe tell someone where they were going. Even if they just leave a message or a note. I also kind of saw the reveal at the end. I thought something like that might happen.
I did like how the author handled the women's captivity. I was a little wary of this book because I feared there might be a lot of gory details of what happened to the girls, but she really left most of it to our imaginations. I would, however, have liked to know a little more about why Jennifer was singled out to get the worst punishment and exactly how did it differ--other than her being kept in that box. Which is absolutely horrible.
And I really wanted more details about how this psychopath could get a sentence where he could possibly be paroled in ten years. That is absolutely crazy. There was vague reference to a mistake at the lab, but to me the women's testimony alone, combined with the fact that they were found chained in his home, should have been enough. I also don't think they would have left the torture rack in his house. It would have been taken as evidence.
Overall it was a good book. Mystery novels don't need to be completely believable to be enjoyable and this one was enjoyable.

This book was a good read to me. Though many people didn't like the ending, I for one found it pretty interesting. It was a page turner. The charters are not that deep. You don't feel for them as much as you should. But they do keep you on the hook with various plot twists.

Sarah and Jennifer are best of friends, here's what is different about them, they are extremely cautious. They have researched and studied about disaster that could strike and derailed it out in their journal. To them life is about survival. They just want to be safe. They have a never list. List of things never to do. For example, don't get into a stranger's car in the middle of the night.

Everything changes in college. They try to let go and live their life. They go their first party, drink too much and catch a cab. In their altered state, their defenses are down and they are abducted by a sadist. He keeps them in a dungeon with 2 other girls. He tortures them everyday. But one day Jennifer disappears. Sarah is devastated after this. She arrives hard to find the truth. After 3 years, she finally escapes. But Jennifer is gone forever.

10 years later, Sarah has graduated, has a job and her own apartment. Her captor still sends her letters. She has agoraphobia, claustrophobia and anxiety. She is still traumatised even after all these years. One day, the detective calls to her that her captor might get out early. He is up for appeal. Jennifer's body was never found. She is determined to get enough evidence to keep him in jail. She steps out of her house and plays detective. She almost dies finding the truth.

The ending was a shock. It was baffling. Over all its an interesting read.

Read it / Skip it- My verdict- Worth a read

Zan does a good job setting up the plot, and I quite like her writing and the voice that she gives to Sarah, but a lot of the big reveals that happen depend on having concern for or just opinions about the characters, and I really didn't care about them at all.
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**3.5 stars.

I started this book while at the beach and I immediately got sucked into the storyline. I read it the rest of the day because I had to see how it ended.

Yes, some of the plot points were a little unrealistic and I wasn't exactly surprised at the twist but it was a quick easy read.

Check out the full review at Kritters Ramblings

Sarah/Caroline lived through a horrific car accident and with her best friend made a list of things never to do to hopefully avoid any other catastrophes. Something happened one night while they were at college and they end up kidnapped and locked in a basement and tortured. The story picks up years after Sarah escapes and is thrust into a hunt for information to avoid her captor to be put out on parole. She must link up with the other two girls who survived the terror to finish what she started.

I picked this up for a dollar at the discount store. It was definitely worth it. I must warn you that it was full of torture and abuse of woman but it was an intriguing mystery about three women trying to understand why they were chosen as victims of this sadistic killer. There were twists everywhere in the plot. You never knew they should trust or who they should run from.

4.5 stars. This was heartbreaking and gut wrenching. I wouldn't even say that I found this to be very thrilling or even that exciting, but I was so enthralled in the experience of the characters that I found it hard to put down. This focuses heavily on psychology which definitely makes things more interesting. The plot is always moving along, but it also feels as if things are standing still at the same time, perhaps because of how we get a glimpse into both past and present. I don't think that the pacing of this story will be for everyone, but I liked it. The story was also able to transition between past and present quite well. It made me feel a certain way that I can't quite put into words.

Very dark and disturbing subject matter. There are some very unbelievable points in the plot that have you raise your eyebrows, the biggest of which is just how quickly our main heroine Sarah is able to work through her PTSD that has been relentlessly haunting her for a decade with very little resistance. Her additional insistence on how paranoid she is versus how recklessly she acts and how naïve she can be were a few points of frustration. Nonetheless, Sarah's character is enjoyable and her development was great. The story wouldn't have been as good if she spent the first 150 pages too terrified to leave her apartment, after all. You have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit here, but the entirety of the book overall is worth overlooking some of the more unbelievable aspects.

Meh. It was . . .

Well, so the story . . .

Sigh. I guess it just was disappointing.

Overall a good story. I think this book tried really hard to be dark but just missed the mark. I originally heard about this book from a "if you like Gone Girl you'll love..." list. Doesn't even compare to Gillian Flynn's darkness.

I am a big fan of this genre, I love thrillers. This might be something you don’t know about me, even if you have been following my blog for a while now. That is because I haven’t been reading a lot of thrillers lately seeing as I’ve really gotten into more YA and Romance books these days. But the romance has just been bumped back a couple of notches by this perfect book! I’m so ready for a summer full of fictional crime I can’t even put it into words. And can I just mention that when they say this is a book for fans of Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, and S.J. Watson, they are absolutely right. (It just so happens that I am a fan of all three and wow, I really am a fan of Koethi Zan’s now!)

The storyline was just great, it had such a great mix of mystery and emotions. It was so exciting that it just kept me reading this book until it was finished. I just couldn’t put this book down, ever since I read the synopsis I was hooked and then I started reading and it got even worse. This book was like drugs to me. The story plays a big part of this story, there are emotions involved in this book, but to me there was the definite thriller-ness of this book on the forefront. You just wanted to find out what had happened and was going to happen. And every step of the way you just wanted more! I am not kidding when I say this book is very addicting, you just can’t put it down once you’ve started. It’s agony when you do (so don’t even try). Oh and by the way, I love the ending, it’s just wow. Really wow.

I was such a big fan of these characters. I can’t say that I know what they are going through, what they have going through or how they are feeling. But I really had the feeling that they were so realistic. I particularly enjoyed the way each of the victims handled their past differently and has their own set of post-trauma coping mechanisms. But also the people who hadn’t been part of the horrible things that happened in that cellar had some strange aspects about them. But it was all so real and never completely good. There were always these sides to people which made them a shade of grey instead of either black or white and that’s just something I can truly appreciate. It’s just recognizing that some people are just plain weird but most of us are pretty normal with a few splashes of weird thrown in the mix.

The writing in this book was just what the story needed. There was that great duet between the flashbacks and the present times. Every time it switched you just wanted to know more about whatever you were just reading but as soon as you get even half a paragraph into a new flashback you are just sucked right in all over again. It was pretty fast paced writing but it just kept the story moving right ahead. There were also some emotional things there and while I really feel that they have a place within a thriller, because that just makes you have all the feels, it was great that it wasn’t overdone on the feelings here. There was just enough to let you know how they felt and get you emotionally attached to the people in the story without just being pages and pages of feelings.

For me there weren’t any let downs at all to this book. I just loved it with all my heart and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I advise anyone who is partial to the thriller genre to pick up this gem and just enjoy it as much as I did.