"The cabin is unlocked, but there’s no escape. When Brooke was kidnapped on her way home from work, she thought her life was over. That was ten years ago. She’s been held captive in an isolated cabin on the Oregon coast ever since, scrambling to follow her kidnappers’ twisted instructions to the letter. Because the price of a mistake is death. But when a new victim shows up, everything changes. Including the rules. And this time, the only way to survive is to break them."
This is a bit of a shorter read (around 250 pages) and Nelson wastes no time getting us right into the middle of the plot. By chapter 2 we are in the cabin with Brooke and getting the rundown of the situation she's lived in for the past 10 years. I loved that the explanation for the reader never felt super heavy handed or unrealistic exposition dump. It helps that the kidnappers have a pretty straightforward set up for their captives and it isn't overly complex. This also helped me settle into the plot more quickly and focus on the actual current events on the plot rather than trying to figure out the overall world for these characters. The pacing was pretty fast but never felt rushed. I liked that we have an external force kicking these characters into action which felt very authentic, especially for Brooke who has been here a long time.
For the characters, I think Nelson does a good job of giving us very quick character details and having each of them be so distinct from the others. However, since the actual plot of this read happens over the course of only a few weeks, it doesn't feel like we have a ton of development on page and instead we are more told that the character used to behave like X but now are more like Y. We do get multi-POVs between the kidnapping victims and I do think they had distinctive enough voices that I never really got confused. We get a good amount of conflict due to the high-stress situation along with the very small living quarters and these higher emotional moments were fantastic.
There is a second plot line introduced about halfway through that I was very confused about at first. Of course, I knew that this new plot must converge with the established plot eventually but I didn't love the way the two came together. This is where I could feel the author coming in and forcing some of the plot reveals to happen more quickly than maybe they would have naturally done. I liked the ending results, but I wanted more time with this second plot. I think maybe if it was added earlier and developed a little more on its own, then it would have felt a little more important and the connection between the two would be more monumental. I also think maybe some readers might guess the connection reveal early, but for me I didn't have enough time to really even try to connect the dots myself so the reveal was less of an OMG moment and more of a "oh, ok" moment.
Overall, this was a fast paced read that lived up to the premise. We get some great characters and the tension is well-built. I didn't love the way the ending reveal was integrated into the main plot, but I think it still worked overall.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ticking Clock Press, LLC for the ARC.
Publication date was February 27, 2024
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