No Exit
by Taylor Adams
Blurb:
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?
My Reaction:
The blurb sounded like something I'd like, but it didn't work out that way. Based on the information in the blurb, I knew there was probably going to be some medical content, but when the specifics unfolded... and it just kept coming up... that was a problem for me. I've mentioned on here before that I really dislike books to focus what I consider to be too much on certain medical problems/diseases. I'm reading for pleasure, and that is the exact opposite of pleasurable reading, for me.
So, there were frequent references to a horrible disease that I don't want to think about, and then there was the fact that it felt like I was making slow progress (and constantly in the back of my mind dreading the next gotcha moment with the disease). Oh, and I'd just read far enough (not that far, really) to see that a villain was identified. So... What? Was that it? No more mystery? That was disappointing and essentially finished off my interest in reading the book.
There's a movie adaptation of the book available, so I decided to just watch that instead. The adaptation was okay (though somewhat more depressing that I expected), but at least now I don't "have" to finish the book to know what happens. Phew.
(It was interesting to note that someone saw fit to change the nature of Darby's mother's medical problem.)
