Play Book Tag discussion

A thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath

A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?

On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.

Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.

Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?

There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?

Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, 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?

From the very first pages, this thriller captivated my attention and held it until the very end. The latter half of the book took an unexpected and chilling turn, morphing into a gripping horror tale that kept me on the edge of my seat. Though some scenes were so vividly portrayed that I found myself quickly skimming past them, unable to stomach their sheer horror.

The precociousness of Jay, the young girl at the centre of the story, sometimes bordered on implausibility, while the university student, Darby, made a series of mistakes that left me feeling as though disaster was inevitable. Yet despite their flaws, the author expertly crafted a palpable sense of suspense that had me feeling every emotion alongside the characters and hoping for their safe escape.

The breakneck pace of the novel never let up, with little time for introspection or reflection as the characters were constantly on the move, their plans shifting and evolving in real time. Yet for all the action, the central conflict remained the same, with Darby valiantly fighting to prevent a devastating abduction at great personal cost.