Summary: On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the Colorado Rockies. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop with no cell phone reception. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.
Desperate to find a signal to call home, the exhausted young art student goes back out into the storm…and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car is a little girl locked in an animal crate.
Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?
There is no way to call for help and and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?
Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation on the edge of civilization, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.
But who can she trust?
(Summary from book flap – Image from pinterest.com)
My Review: When Darby Thorne gets snowed in at a remote rest stop with several other travelers, she is primarily worried about getting home in time to see her ailing mother. That is, until she sees the small child caged in the back of the van next to hers. Obviously, the kidnapper is one of the travelers stranded with her. With no way out, Darby must find a way to rescue the child and defend herself against an enemy that is hidden in plain sight.
I rarely read thrillers but the premise of this story sounded intriguing so I decided to give this one a go. No Exit is an easy-to-read, high-stakes thriller with multiple POVs. For some reasons I expected the story to be told entirely from Darby’s perspective and was pleasantly surprised when other characters started chiming in. Their voices brought additional insight, creepiness, and depth to the narrative. One in particular, but I won’t spoil it for you.
Sadly, No Exit just wasn’t my thing. It felt oddly predictable, in that the timing of each twist made it clear that the author was trying to force the reader’s attention in a specific direction. For example, the reader finds out who the kidnapper is in the first 60 pages, but it’s obvious there are other elements at play and there are only so many directions the story can take. With each new ‘twist,’ I would look down at the remaining pages and figure out the next one. It just felt too easy.
No Exit doesn’t feel particularly violent at first, but it does become increasingly graphic as the story progresses. I’m a bit of a ‘newb’ to the whole thriller experience, so I don’t have a good grasp on the level-of-violence spectrum, but I felt detached from the story in those moments. I think it is something I do to protect my brain. I knew I was reading a thriller that was likely to be traumatic, so I braced for impact and kept the story at arms length.
While I did finish No Exit in short order, I can’t say that I enjoyed it. I was just reading it to finish. I felt like the story was only mildly thrilling and wasn’t invested in the outcome. There was a small twist at the very end which gave the story a little kick, but not with enough force to change my mind or my rating.
My Rating: 3.25 Stars
For the Sensitive Reader: Language: Some profanity, innuendo, racist, and crass language. Violence: Threats of sexual violence, murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, assault, torture, gore. Sexual content: One kiss, not romantic (M/F). Some crude imagery.
