As you can see I picked up just about any book that someone said was like Gone Girl or Girl on the Train this summer…and I’ve been burned people, burned I say! But YOU may love it because it looks like my opinion is not the popular sentiment.
Mia Dennett is a 25 year old art teacher and daughter of a judge. One evening, after her boyfriend stands her up she makes the decision to go home with a man named Colin whom she meets at the bar. What she doesn’t know is that Colin is there to abduct her and deliver her to someone else. Instead of doing this, however, he abducts her and takes her to a secluded cabin in Minnesota. The book is told from two perspectives- Mia’s mother and from Colin the kidnapper. We know a few chapters in that Mia has been found, it’s what happened while she was gone that is the mystery that slowly unravels as the book goes on. Why does Mia refer to herself as Chloe? Why can’t she remember what happened at the cabin?
Again, it’s hard to talk about these books without spoilers but I’m going to spoil it a little because I can’t really take not talking about the MAJOR issues I have with this book. So SPOILER ALERT, SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.
So, apparently Colin is a kidnapper with a heart and he doesn’t deliver Mia to the guy because a) he doesn’t know what that guy is going to do with her and b) which was the more important issue in Colin’s eyes at the time, if the other dude got caught, he would sell out Colin and he really didn’t want to go to jail. In the beginning, he’s just about as awful as you would think any kidnapper would be…you know, shoving guns against your head and yelling to shut the fuck up, robbing stores at gunpoint and having you there as an accomplice and all that jazz (you know like ABDUCTING her in the first place) but we readers KNOW that he’s really not that awful because…because she attempts to get him to have sex with him to barter for her freedom but he turns her down. What restraint! What a fucking prince! He also really, really loves his mom who is debilitated and that’s why he had to take this job in the first place, because washing dishes doesn’t put tv dinners on his mom’s table! So he’s actually awesome, he’s just a little misguided, that’s all. I mean, (shoulder shrug) what are you going to do? Not take the abduction job? So it’s firmly in place that Colin is a moron of epic proportions and that abduction thing really wasn’t a thing even though they’re basically starving and freezing in the wilds of Minnesota and oh yeah he threatened to kill her. But don’t worry good readers, they fall in love because they realize that they are the only two people who have ever truly cared about one another because they both have extreme daddy issues. EYE FUCKING ROLL. No Mia, what you’re experiencing is Stockholm Syndrome, or if you’re really falling in love with him, you’re an idiot.
END SPOILERS
I hated this book. I hated it so very, very much. I felt like I feel down the rabbit hole and landed in some conglomerate of every soap opera story line that never made sense. Oh and there’s a big twist that was just soooo twisty that my eyes rolled so hard for the 1 billionty time that they nearly fell out of my head but I said, “Nope, not today eyes” and I shut the stupid book and said, “I’m going to sit on writing this review so I’m not so vitriolic but clearly even a week has done little to temper my anger towards this book and the fact that I paid for it. Later, I read that it was published by Harlequin and it made a little more sense as to why it was so damn stupid. But hey marketing, you did a fine job snagging me with those buzzwords Gone Girl and Girl on the Train. Gillian Flynn should make royalties any time someone compares her books to something.
THE END OF MY RANT, have a great day!
