Author: J. T. Carroll

Length: ~ 137 pages

Genre: Suspense

Heat level: Clean  

Stars: 2.5 Somewhere Between Stars 

Book Summary:

Kelly graduated from MIT, but it wasn’t enough to secure her dream job in this economy. Instead, she labors as an intern at a software company. On the way to work one morning, Kelly interrupts a masked man who is kidnapping her despised boss, Rupert. The kidnapper decides to bring Kelly along for the ride. Kelly and Rupert must escape to prevent the kidnapper from stealing six million dollars. Abandoned hundreds of miles from their office with no money or ID, they have less than twenty-four hours to return to the scene of the crime and stop the theft. Can two computer programmers outsmart criminals and emerge unscathed? The clock is ticking.

Review:

We really wanted to like this book. We liked the premise of geek turned crime stopper and we really enjoyed the narrative voice in the first couple of pages. But everything seemed to peter off after that. Our biggest issue was not connecting with Kelly. There wasn’t really any character arc over the story and little to no description of her reactions and feelings. We wanted things to be more sensory and to feel immersed in the setting. The (very slight) romance/flirtation between Rupert and Kelly felt forced. We did really enjoy the ‘little Italy’ street that was created in New Jersey and thought that was an interesting idea. However, the novel really needed to be fleshed out. Much too short. We also felt the plot was too linear. A problem would be presented and then solved very quickly. There weren’t any real setbacks or twists, the first solution presented always worked, or there was some convenient fix. The two main characters were kidnapped on page 1 and had escaped where they were trapped within 15 pages. There were quite a few cliches that brought us out of the story narrative and we felt the reasons behind why Rupert and Kelly took on the bad guys instead of going to the police weren’t plausible enough. In essence this was a story that had a good premise and some great potential but unfortunately fell short of the mark.