Imagine being stuck in a winter storm while being surrounded by sketchy people. Doesn’t sound like the best experience, right? The book No Exit, by Taylor Adams, is about this college girl named Darby who gets stranded at a gas station because of the severe winter storm. She was on her way to her mother who was dying of cancer. She had a falling out with her mother and wanted to make it right by visiting her mother during her last few moments of life. Instead, she gets stuck with other people who have sinister intentions with a small child.
Throughout the book there were small hints and foreshadowing about the upcoming events. For example, in the book, when she found the child in the van, the child gave her a bullet which she used in the gun she obtained to threaten the kidnappers. These small events in the book make the readers stay on their toes and it makes them pay attention to every little detail in the book.
This book also demonstrates the cause and effect principle. She was going to her dying mother (cause) and then gets stuck in the storm (effect). For that reason, she got stuck in the storm she had to stop at a gas station and then finds a kidnapped child. There are many examples throughout the book for this principle. This makes the book way more interesting since the reader is always thinking.
What I liked about the book is that it was continuous. It never stopped. There was not one single boring part and wishing I could just skip past it. It was always on the move. As Joe Hill – a bestselling author of The Fireman – quoted in this book: “No Exit is everything I want in a thriller… unapologetically relentless… I was blown away.” It always kept you guessing and you couldn’t really tell what actually was going to happen. In an R-Com, you would know that the guy gets the girl, then the guy loses the girl, and then they end up together. Really predictable. Oh no, not with this book. Always developing.
And the best part, there are no loose ends. You know how some books have so much information and plot lines, that they get jumbled and crossed and they never always explain what happened to this person? They usually only resolve one plot line. Well, this book, you know what happens to Darby, her mother, the kidnappers, and the small kidnapped child. I am not going to tell you what happens because that would ruin everything now, wouldn’t it?
To tell you the truth, I was kind of emotional while reading this. The fact that all Darby wanted to do was see her mother one last time, then ends up trying to save a child, it’s the feeling of “all I wanted to do was...and I ended up…” which could be a good thing or a bad thing. In Darby’s case, they were equally bad and good. She wanted to see her mother and she ended up saving a child. But in doing so, she had to face kidnappers and and the harsh cold, as well as other contributing factors.
This book is amazing! I would definitely recommend. If you like suspense, thrillers, and heroic actions with a bunch of twists and turns, then this book is the one for you. Oh, did I mention, there are no cliffhangers?
Written by Maya Kaul
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