"Jan needs this. She’s flying to Crete to reunite with friends she met there five years ago and relive an idyllic vacation. Basking in the warmth of the sun, the azure sea, and the aura of antiquity, she can once again pretend—for a little while—that she belongs. Her ex-boyfriend Marcus will be among them, but even he doesn’t know the secrets she keeps hidden behind a veil of lies. None of them really know her, and that’s only part of the problem.
Then again, how well does she know them?
When Jan awakens in utter darkness, chained to a wall, a manacle around her wrist, her echoing screams only give her a sense of how small her cell is. As she desperately tries to reconstruct what happened and determine who is holding her prisoner, dread covers despair like a hand clamped over her mouth. Because, like the Minotaur in the labyrinth in Greek myth, her captor will be coming back for her, and all the lies will catch up to her…"
I picked this for my May Amazon first reads and I'm so glad I didn't pay for it. I don't like to say a book was 100% bad but this was bad. The blurb sounded interesting and drew me in but it did not live up to expectations. I only finished it to see how it ended.
The book starts with who we assume is Jan, because we aren't actually told her name for a few chapters, chained to a wall in a dark room with no memory. It switches between past and present and Jan starts to remember bits of her weird holiday in Crete with old friends she barely knows.
I didn't like any of the characters and the dialog was terrible. The whole holiday was a bit ridiculous. The story was pretty boring until the last few chapters where everything was tied together. I guessed the so called twist pretty early on and nothing was really a surprise. There's a lot of Greek mythology as well which dragged and I ended up skim reading a lot of it. I definitely won't be jumping to read any more from this author which is a shame because this could have been an interesting plot.
Don't Wake Up by Liz Lawler
"Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn't a doctor.
The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable.
But when Alex re-awakens, she's unharmed - and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.
And then she meets the next victim."
After a pretty bad first book of the month I then started about 3 more books that I could not get into. This one definitely made up for it though. I could not put this down and actually read it in a day. It draws you in with a very intense first chapter and it kept me gripped throughout.
Alex wakes up tied to an operating table and has to make a horrific decision. She then wakes up in hospital completely unharmed except a bump to her head. Nobody believes that she was abducted and tormented. They blame past events for her broken mind and eventually even she starts to question herself. Then there is another victim and things just get more complicated and more tense.
This book is a pretty tense read. I spent the whole book trying to work out how the hell anything would be proved or sorted out. I had my suspicions about the bad guy but I couldn't work out the motive so I doubted myself. It's definitely fast paced and kept me hooked. I also loved a lot of the characters and the ones that I didn't like were still extremely well written. This book honestly makes you feel all the emotions that Alex goes through and I cannot think of anything scarier than this plot.
I definitely recommend Don't wake Up if you love psychological thrillers and I cannot wait for more from Liz.
What have you been reading recently?
Beth...x
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