A couple of days, ago, I finished reading the book Abducted by T. R. Ragan after 9 days of reading and I have to say that generally I quite liked the novel so want to share with you a review of the book.
The premise is based on a young girl - Lizzy Gardner - who is abducted by a serial killer while walking home one night. After two months in captivity, she manages to escape through a small bathroom window but she never truly gets over the torture that she experienced while there. Fast forward ten years, the killer - dubbed Spiderman - strikes again, choosing a young girl to torture and then murder, leaving Lizzy a personal message in the process. Lizzy must find a way to overcome her fears from the past while working to not only solve her own abduction, but also the abduction of over half a dozen other girls.
The Good
I actually really like the premise of the book and trying to figure out who Spiderman is and what motivates him to abduct and kill the teenagers. I found that it was really compelling to read to find out all of the secrets.
The chapters are a good length; they don’t feel too short or too long and they were also split into smaller chapters that each had their own date, timestamp and character’s point of view. These shorter chapters made it so easy to read the book, even if the timestamps were unnecessary.
I thought the characters were generally nice. I have read books that weren’t very compelling to finish due to the main character/characters not evoking sympathy from me and thus me not caring for them, however I have to say that overall, T. R. Ragan did a good job in creating captivating characters.
The Bad
Although I have classified the characters under the ‘good’ heading, I feel as though I have to also mention the bad aspects about them. I felt like the main character Lizzy was too ‘woe is me’ and sometimes I lost sympathy for her. Her reactions may be legitimate based on everything that she went through during the time she was abducted, however there were times where I felt as though she was being too extreme. I also disliked Hayley on the whole as I felt like she was a bit too tough and a bit too stupid when she tried to be the protagonist. No offence to her, though.
The climax happened incredibly fast and was over before I realised we had reached the climax. Maybe there is something wrong with me as a reader/audience member as I felt the same way about the film Ouija but for me, the climax was disappointingly short.
Overall, I felt as though the writing was good, however there were parts where it looked quite immaturely written, simply because there were a few short sentences in a row that could have easily been connected. Again, maybe this is just personal opinion but it felt a bit choppy to me when this happened.
The Ugly
The characters were introduced quite fast, which meant it took a bit of brain power to follow who was who - who is Karen, who is Cindy, who is Hayley, who is Cathy? It wasn’t too tough to follow but it definitely required some thinking to determine who each character.
Each segment of each chapter was from the point of view of different characters - on the whole, I liked this aspect about the book as it progressed the storyline and revealed what was going on at parallel times to different characters, although there were some incidences where the POV changes were unnecessary and prevented the flow of the book.
Entertainment: 8/10
Predictability: 3/10
Density/weight of story: 6/10
Quality of writing: 7/10
Inspires reader: 2/10
Characters: 6/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Overall I do quite like this book and while I won’t be rushing to read the next instalment (I have an urge to read Christmas books to help with the excitement of December!)
What have you read recently?
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