Listened to with teeth grinding

This book kept me absorbed and I enjoyed it albeit I loathed the main protaganist - the father. Another review describes him as self pitying and I would agree. Whilst understandably obesessed with daughter's disappearence, he is an aggressive, angry, self interested man. This man is supposed to be a university lecturer but you would think he has never read anything about victims, especially those held by a captor, and the psycological effect on these people. He is abusive to his daughter under the guise if caring for her and is dictatorial to everyone he comes into contact with.
I can't say I liked the other characters much either with the wet week religious wife and her pastor. However, despite this the story kept me interested and the narrator is great (which always makes a difference).

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1 person found this helpful

Every parent's nightmare

I won't say this is an enjoyable read but it is extremely well written and a great example of how things might not turn out exactly as you would wish. There are parts of the story were I actually felt angry. This really does deliver an emotional punch.

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3 people found this helpful

Good suspense thriller

Plenty of twists and turns. I enjoyed the book, the characters and the narrator. Subject matter was difficult to listen to at times but the author did not over do the details which I appreciated.

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1 person found this helpful

Cemetery Girl

I was surprised by the ending, not in a pleasant way. There were so many twists and turns to this book that my interest stayed but almost as many impossibilities and unexplored relationships.

I did listen in one sitting though and it was an extremely thought provoking topic. In all, well worth the download, just a little unexpected in some places.

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7 people found this helpful

Weird

I listened to this last year and thought it was a weird style of a book.

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1 person found this helpful

Psychobabble

Remind me never to download a book by an American author again! Self pitying psychobabble - goes nowhere.

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Not for me!

First person narration only provoked hostility on the part of this reader since the father's perspective is what drives the ridiculous plot and denouement and he comes across as a self righteous prig. Utterly unconvincing tale.

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Irritating in the extreme

I am pleased that I bought this on special offer, it really would have been annoying to have paid full price for it. The main character was a self pitying guy, who didn't think anybody else has valid feelings, he was obsessed by the loss of his daughter - OK - reasonable enough, but he was more concerned about the wrongs done to him, and the 'I have to know' syndrome than any rational consideration for his long lost daughter.

I really didn't like any of the characters - from the self obsessed father, right down to the slimy pastor and including all those in between.

I definitely would not recommend this book to anyone.

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2 people found this helpful

Frustrating

It speaks well of the performance of this that I spent the first four hours desperately wanting to smack the main character in the face. I firstly thought I was meant to feel this way, that it was meant to symbolise the frustration of Caitlin being missing. Then when she came back it got a whole lot worse. I struggled to get into the head of Tom, to understand his motivations. And though I suspected the twist at the end, it felt like I'd taken so long to get to it that I no longer had any will to find it out. I'd lost all patience with Tom, and found the character of Caitlin so under explored as to lack empathy too. Great performance, long story.

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One of the dullest books ever

I thought this book would be about Stockholm syndrome (in which the captive develops empathy with her captors), and the difficulties of Caitlin’s readjustment into family life having been kidnapped at the age of twelve and returned 4years later. However it was all about the self-absorption of her father, Tom; how he coped with her absence, reflections of his own disturbed childhood and his obsession to discover exactly what had his daughter had been through, driven by curiosity rather than concern. As Tom became more obsessed, his wife, Abby, increasingly looked for support and comfort from Pastor Chris, falling slightly short of having an affair with the man. Neither parent had Caitlin’s best interests at heart. The storyline didn’t go anywhere and in the end this proved to be one of the dullest books I have ever read.

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