Macabre. Brutal. Creepy. Crazy. Disturbing.

This novel will, in places, turn your stomach, make you flinch.

But still you will read on.

The Never List is two mysteries in one. As it opens, we find Sarah, Tracy, and Christine living lives as normal as possible granted that, ten years earlier, they had been living as prisoners in Jack Derber's basement, prisoners that Jack tortured and abused as he pleased.

Jack, however, is now up for parole. He's been a model prisoner, and he was never convicted of homicide, so there's a real possibility that he could be released.

And so two mysteries are unraveled: the first is how the three young women finally escaped Jack's homemade dungeon; the second is the mystery surrounding Jack's current schemes, especially as concerns his relationships with Sylvia, a woman he married while in prison, and a mysterious cult leader named Noah. The mysteries are inter-related, and they unfold through the first-person narration of Sarah.

There are some great twists and surprises in this novel, one of which most readers will probably sense is coming but not find out for sure until the very end. The author's ability to hold the readers in suspense as our heroine grows ever closer to the truth is masterful.

We also watch some of the things that Sarah does with utter amazement: no one could be this stupid, I said to myself on several occasions, nonplussed by the imbecilic decisions that she made. But, of course, Sarah is an extremely psychologically scarred woman, driven by pain and rage and regret and revenge, and so she does not always reason in a completely logical fashion. So, while her stupidity on occasion is nearly incredible, her foolish actions serve to build more and more tension and to captivate the readers all the more.

For a first novel, Koethi Zan has done very, very well.