HarperCollins Seven Days, Crime & Thriller, Paperback, Alex Lake
4757 ratings
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Price: £9.99
Brand: HarperCollins
Description: An incredible psychological crime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author'This is creepy storytelling of the highest order: spine-chilling and difficult to put down' Daily Mail. HarperCollins Seven Days, Crime & Thriller, Paperback, Alex Lake - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Harper Collins
Product ID: 9780008272364
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Dimensions: 129x198mm
Keywords: kidnap,abduction,kidnapping,Secret,secrets,lie,lies,betrayal,murder,missing,child,children,urban,binge,quick,easy,gripping,twist,twisty,conspiracies,noir,cosy,cozy,perfect,family,baby,mother,women,female,amateur,sleuth,sleuths,detective,women’s,action,&,adventure,reunion,room,international,hard-boiled,holiday,serial,killer,killers,vigilante,justice,women’s,new adult & college,police,procedural,procedurals
ISBN: 9780008272364
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Author: Mr. S. E. Johnson
Rating: 5
Review: This is a book that several of my fellow reviewers raved about over a year ago, and it's been on my to-read list ever since. So you could be forgiven for wondering why on earth it's taken me so long to actually get round to reading it. The simple answer is that instead, I read his next book 'The Choice' first, and was left feeling underwhelmed and thinking that the sea of hype into which it seemed to launch was not really warranted. I'm not saying that it was bad enough to leave me unwilling to read anything else by the same author - that would be way too harsh - but enough that I was in no particular hurry to do so. Indeed, had it not been for a challenge to "read a book that takes place over a specific time period", 'Seven Days' might still be languishing somewhere near the bottom of the pile. This would have been a real shame. Because, wow, this book really did deserve all the hype it got. It begins in a basement, where Maggie Cooper has been imprisoned for the last twelve years. Her son Max, who she was forced to bear by her abductor, turns three in seven days' time. Max is her third child. Her two other sons were taken by her kidnapper on their third birthdays and she has never seen them since. She can't bear the thought of the same thing happening to Max, but how can she possibly find a way to stop it before his birthday arrives? As the days pass, the tension mounts. Efforts to reason with her abductor meet with point blank refusals, and an attempt to overpower him fails badly. But Maggie loses none of her determination. She can't. Because her and Max's love for each other means that anything else is unthinkable. They are, quite literally, each other's world. The reader feels for them both, can clearly visualise what they are going through and screams at Maggie to think of something. Interspersed with these chapters are flashbacks to Maggie's abduction twelve years earlier, and the effects it had on her dad Martin, mum Sandra, younger brother James and investigating police officer, DI Jane Wynne. The parents desperate drive to keep going, to keep functioning despite their inability to sleep, just in case their daughter is found alive. James' inability to form a relationship with a woman, because to do so makes the loss of his big sister feel all the more real, and his descent into drink and drugs because they manage, however briefly, to ease the pain inside him. Ultimately, this peaks in two incredibly poignant and powerful chapters, in which James contemplates suicide because he thinks his parents don't deserve the son that he has become. And then immediately, we watch as Martin can do nothing but cry uncontrollably at the thought of losing another child. Meanwhile, DI Wynne can't forget the case, and not just because it was one of her earliest as a DI. But also because she has received anonymous letters almost once a year after it. After four years, she leaps on a possible lead with every ounce of energy she possesses, only to come to a dead end. I was inside her head, sharing her frustration and sense of failure as she bought those two bottles of wine on the way home from work. I wanted to reach out and hug them all. And scream in their faces. Because we know something they don't. We learn, fairly early on in the book, who the abductor is. And we watch in almost open-mouthed horror as a true psychopath works his way into the other characters' lives. Eight tenths in and I was absolutely glued to the book, wanting to race to the end and yet at the same time, not wanting it to finish. However, when the ending came, it was somehow just a bit less satisfying than everything that had led up to it. The problem is not the pace, because this really couldn't have been anything different. It's the fact that, ultimately, its what we hoped for but also expected. There is no final twist. And in a book that's marketed as a "psychological crime thriller", this is a significant omission. I thought, briefly, about deducting half-a-star for this, but this really didn't seem fair when every single one of the other chapters are that good. I also thought about summing the book up as a sort of 'Room' by Emma Donaghue meets 'Then She Was Gone' by Lisa Jewell, but that wouldn't be fair either. It deserves recognition in its own right. Therefore, I'll simply say that it's amazing and add my own five stars to all of the other, well-deserved, rave reviews.
Author: Ruju
Rating: 2
Review: After reading Alex lake's novel about a teenage girl, Maggie, who is abducted and imprisoned in a middle-aged man's basement, I was surprised to see so many high ratings. Baffled, even. This type of story has been done before, usually better in my experience, although it's a decent plot for a novel if developed well. The story is told in various timelines, briefly from before the abduction, and then at stages throughout the following years. It is also told from several points of view, Maggie's, her father's, her mother's, her brother's and the investigating detective's. The chapters featuring Maggie soon become repetitive, and those of her family feel almost irrelevant, as if if they have been tagged on to fill out the novel. Those featuring the detective only serve to highlight her incompetence. With the short chapters, different timelines and points of view, the narrative never gets into any sort of rhythm that compelled me to continue. The story suffers from some inconsistencies and some ridiculous behaviour. On one occasion, one of the characters is poised to do something, hand held ready, and the chapter ends. The reader is taken on a tour of other characters doing various things over a period of time before returning to the original character who is still poised after what must be hours later. Another time, the detective misses something so obvious that my coffee mug would have spotted it, yet a young lad ravaged by drugs spots it immediately. Seven Days is well-written enough, albeit rather simply, in an uncomplicated style that gets the job done. The story had just enough to make me continue to get to the conclusion. For these reasons, I was set to rate it 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3. However, a couple of things that happened toward the end caused me to round it down to 2 instead. I'm clearly in the minority though, so don't let me put you off.
