Nicci French is in actual fact not a single female author, but two authors writing under a pseudonym; Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. I am not a huge fan of their work; but my sister is, so when I asked her to find me books to read on two 12 hour bus rides, she handed me this book. This book opens quite terrifyingly when a woman wakes up of no idea where she is, and discovers she has been taken prisoner and will likely be killed. The prose in this chapter is quite terrifying and as often happens in good books you feel like you are right there with the main character, Abbie as she battles what seems to be a hopeless situation. I think the beginning of this book is classically "thriller", suspenseful and nail-biting.
The book follows on from here as Abbie tries to come back to "the land of the living" and tries to return to normal life but finds this impossible to do, especially when police, psychiatrists and friends all doubt her seemingly impossible story about what has happened.
It is the relentless battle of a victim who no one will believe that drew me to this book. Most victims even if they are believed are terrified that someone does not believe them, so to have a woman actually be told that she is not believed at all sent a chill up my spine (despite being aware that it was a fictional novel). What follows is typical PTSD-esque symptoms, and a fairly believable love affair but terrifying as I tend to suspect everyone in this sort of book.
Plus of course there is a face-off at the end.
Despite following this typical thriller sort of storyline, I did enjoy this book quite a lot, mainly because it was well written and fed off human emotion quite well, or so I thought, but I had been on a bus for a fair while at this point. Oh dear.
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