Rated 2 stars ** Farrar Straus Giroux. 2016. 294 p.
When sixteen-year-old Julia and her best friend Liv went for a run in the woods, a man attacked Liv with a knife. Julia rushed to her rescue and he broke her ankle but, instead of helping her, Liv ran away. That first night, when her captor fell asleep, Julia managed to escape. Despite her broken ankle and bruised, bleeding body she spent two terrified days putting as much distance as she could between them, until she was finally rescued.
Hailed as a hero because she was able to escape and lead police to her captor, Julia instantly became a media darling. However she couldn’t understand why Liv never wanted to talk about it, insisting she needed to move on. Julia wanted to know more about her captor, especially when the body of a young girl was found in the woods. Eventually Julia plows her way through a tangled web of deceit before she finds out the painful truth about her best friend.
I thought the book had potential, given its “I’m captured by a crazy guy and now have a broken ankle” scenario. However readers don’t get a survival story about Julia’s time in the woods dragging herself away from a captor used to hunting game in those same woods. Instead the author flits about from storyline to storyline, doling out dribs and drabs of Julia’s experiences through memories, amounting to about 3 of the novel’s 294 pages.
I got whiplash from the different storylines, and was not a fan of the ending. Though I didn’t like this book I will leave it up to you teen readers to decide if You want to Read it or Not.
You Decide: Should I Read it or Not? 