2013 book 144

Koethi Zan's The Never List

Y'all, I don't even know where to START talking about this book. I could say how it's weirdly timely, being about three young women who were held captive in a sex/torture dungeon for years before being rescued, and how ten years later their captor has a parole hearing (like, what, how would a guy who kidnapped and tortured several young girls EVER be eligible for parole), and one is determined to find out more about him and keep him behind bars. I could also talk about how that one was kidnapped with her best friend, who was killed by the guy, and there's some interesting stuff about friendship in there. It also turns into a crazy story involving weird cults and S&M clubs at a certain point.  And the writing . . . on the one hand, some of the grammar might be cleaned up by publication (this was an ARC), but there was an exclamation point after a crazy plot development that kind of made me laugh, along with some other minor things (mostly involving commas--I wish writers would err on the side of over-use rather than under-use of commas). And on the other hand--for a lot of plot points that I'd have to suspend disbelief for, Zan does a really good job of explaining why the characters are doing the dumb things they do (people always do dumb things in mysteries, that isn't a reflection on these characters at all). And there are some really harrowing moments (I had to put the book down a couple of times b/c it was stressing me out). I kind of called the end but it was interesting enough that I can't wait for other people to read this so I can be like "omggg!!!" about it. Pretty satisfying, if crazy, thriller, though I'm trying not to analyze the gender stuff too much. B/B+.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in July.