✧ Review of Captivate Me ✧
The book tells the story of its heroine, Noelle, the perfect girl whose life is turned upside down when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man named Beau, around whom rumors circulate that he is a serial killer. On the day of her abduction, Noelle had just broken up with her ex-boyfriend Theo, and soon her family and friends begin a desperate search for her. Her case spreads widely and reaches global social media, as Noelle is seen as the ideal, beautiful girl in everyone’s eyes.
I had previously read one of this author’s works, and the experience impressed me enough to make me search for her other books and add them to my future reading list. After some time, I decided to read another book by this author, and my choice fell on Captivate Me. It is a standalone, relatively short novel that I finished within a few days, even though my journey with it felt long and filled with conflicting emotions.
I started reading with simple expectations, thinking it would be an ordinary book, especially since it falls under the kidnapper victim trope, which is one of my favorite genres. The shock, however, was that I did not like the book as much as I had expected. The main reason was the second couple in the story, Casey and Theo, two main characters whom I could not accept at all.
I did not like the presence of two main couples in one book; on the contrary, I felt a strong aversion toward the other duo, Casey and Theo. Casey’s character was extremely irritating. Out of all the men in the world, she chooses to fall in love with her friend’s boyfriend something I found disgusting and unjustifiable.
Moreover, Casey clearly appeared to be greedy, seeking to possess everything Noelle had, whether materially or emotionally, something the reader can easily notice while reading. The same applies to Theo; out of all women, he chooses his ex girlfriend’s best friend, making their relationship deeply repulsive.
In one chapter, we see Theo getting sexually close to Casey in a parking lot, in a scene that nearly exposes them. Casey appeared overly reckless, trying to initiate intimacy with him by any means possible, desperate to capture his attention at any cost, driven by her pathological fear of being abandoned. This behavior gave me the impression that she is obsessed, or at least psychologically unstable.
I felt that Casey was trying to take over everything that belonged to Noelle, as if she were in constant competition with her not out of love, but out of jealousy and greed. This made her, in my view, one of the worst and most despicable characters in the book.
Casey is, quite literally, a bad friend jealous and harmful. Honestly, because of this duo (Casey and Theo), I even considered lowering my rating to two stars. The plot and storyline were very fast and, frankly, inconsistent at times. As for the main couple, Beau and Noelle, the chemistry between them was perfect by every measure. Their relationship made me fall in love with them. As I mentioned earlier, I adore the “kidnapper and victim” dynamic, and that is the reason I picked up this book in the first place.
The story and events of the book were good overall, but Casey without exaggeration is a vile character. Additionally, Noelle’s relationship with her female friends was not logical at all; it felt as though they were enemies rather than close friends.
In general, I neither loved the book nor hated it.
My final rating: three stars.
From my personal point of view, I believe that Casey knew about her brother’s actions but chose to ignore them and continued to defend and love him, despite the horrific acts he committed against the girls he was involved with.