Run on Red

Run on Red

by Noelle Ihli

Blurb:

A rural country road. No cell signal for miles. A terrifying game of cat-and-mouse.

By the time Laura and Olivia notice the headlights tailing them through the hills, it’s too late. What seems, at first, like a case of road rage quickly unfolds into a heart-pounding chase—and a battle for survival.

Who are the men in the truck? What do they want? And can Laura and Olivia outrun—and outsmart—them long enough to call for help, even if it means taking their chances in the hills on foot?

My Reaction:

I saw this recommended by a "booktuber" as part of a list of fast-paced novels guaranteed (well, maybe not quite that) to get you out of a reading slump.  Now, admittedly I'm not a big reader as an adult.  I enjoy reading in bite-sized chunks, but rarely do I ever just sit and read and read and read. I was more that kind of a reader as a teenager, but as an adult, I have too many other interests I'd rather pursue, most of the time.  So I can't honestly say I am (or was) in a reading slump.  I just apparently don't care for reading books as much as I once did—but I do like a fast-paced novel sometimes.  I'm probably not going to gulp it down in one reading (that's never been my reading style, anyway), but if it's a real page-turner, I'm more likely to finish it within a month or so instead of getting side-tracked for weeks at a time.  

Anyway, this was promised as a page-turner, and to start with, I thought it really was one.  I enjoyed the first however-much a lot, but at some point it lost momentum and became repetitive.  Characters did some stupid (unbelievably stupid) things, and then the end felt rushed.  Eh, it was okay.  I wasn't surprised by any of the twists (if they were meant to be twists), but I wasn't expecting twistiness from this book—just action and adrenaline.

Some of the reviews I've skimmed have been full of annoyance with the inaccuracies of the cell phone technology as described. The book is set back in the dim and distant day of the flip phone, and apparently the author got confused and had these flip phones do things that flip phones didn't do.  I barely used my phone back in those days. I had a very simple model for emergencies only, so what do I know about such things?! It flew right over my head, but evidently this was a big deal for some readers.  I was more frustrated by some stupid (and in my opinion out of character) choices characters made... and the repetitiveness of some of the inner monologue.  

Still, I didn't hate the book, and if her other novels are better, I wouldn't mind trying one of those.  (If I remember, which is doubtful.)  This is probably a 2.5 for me, rounded up to 3.