Hostage: The emotional 'what would you do?' thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

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Just a short way into the flight, Mina receives a note that she can't ignore, calling on her help to derail the flight, or her much beloved adopted daughter will suffer the consequences. While I was curious, I wasn’t at the edge of my seat like I had hoped. The book felt too long and drawn out. I found myself skimming the whole way. I thought the Hostage did a great job of building suspense! Once Mina is on the plane, she finds a belonging of her daughters, which lends credibility to her daughter being threatened. From that moment on, it was a tense ride to the end of the book waiting to see how everything played out! Each chapter was short and snappy, so once I got going with my reading, I didn’t want to stop! Talley is a great lead character, plagued with doubts and concerns for his estranged family. The villains are well done, a believable bunch of fairly clueless criminals, although there's much more to Mars than originally indicated. It was also really effective having short chapters interspersed from the perspectives of passengers on the flight. I enjoyed getting to see their differing reasons for being on the flight and the experiences they have each had in their lives. They had such a clever relevance as the story developed too which I loved. I also liked getting to learn about other passengers from Mina’s interactions with them throughout the flight.

Summary of plot line: Boarding time for 20 hours nonstop direct flight from London to Sydney is just started! The flight crew are so excited to become a part of history. But 34 years old air hostess Mina barely gathers her thoughts to focus on her job, feeling guilty to leave their five years old kid Sophia behind with her estranged husband.

The characters we meet first, who form the core of the story are Mina and Adam, whose marriage has been disintegrating in recent months. They have a five-year-old daughter who is very bright, but has some issues that require effort from Mina and Adam that they both sometimes doubt that they have. Mina's marriage to her husband, Adam, has been strained due to his secrets and lies. Their very bright adopted daughter has had attachment issues and a unique mindset. Both parents have felt inadequate and under strain caring for Sophia. Adam is at home caring for Sophia to the best of his ability with the help of a new, young babysitter. But soon after the plane takes off, Mina receives a chilling anonymous note. Someone wants to make sure the plane never reaches its destination. They're demanding her cooperation . . . and they know exactly how to get it.

The three take refuge in the house, holding a father and his two children hostage. Before long, they are totally surrounded and their chances of getting away safely are nil. If that weren't bad enough, it turns out that the house they have broken into belongs to the accountant for a major mob of criminals. There's over a million dollars in cash in the house. Even more important, there are also computer discs with records that could bring down several major figures in the mob. After finishing the book, I had a nightmare about a different hostage situation on a plane. The intense and propulsive storyline must have had a stronger effect on my emotions than I felt while reading it. With air travel beginning to open up again, this book and Falling may add to the reluctance to fly. There is an emotion decision that has to be made, weighing up options as to what she should do and being judged for it and herself feeling guilty for it. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply! Meanwhile at home, Adam has his own struggles. He has gotten in over his head with the wrong people and receives a painful and frightening visit. He is told he needs to pay or else. But that is not all, he soon learns that his unpaid debts are the least of his worries. His is facing another threat as well.And these kinds of techniques are relatively new. The old way of doing it was to go in and take down the bad guys whatever the cost. There is discussion of adoption and the challenges of raising a difficult child who doesn’t quite fit well in an average school setting.

I wasn't a fan of the author throwing in a few hot button social issues of the day, which did nothing to move the plot forward. I would really urge authors to show restraint and simply focus on telling a good story. Sacrifice your child to save hundreds or sacrifice hundreds to save your child? Which would you choose? Hostage tells the story of the world’s first direct flight between London and Sydney, 20 hours in the air with no stops and over 350 passengers and crew on board. The flight is being heralded as the first of the future - what could possibly go wrong?He was involved in some of the cases that I worked on, like the Waco Siege. In fact I asked for him to be on my team. He also worked on a case involving the Symbionese Liberation Army. This was the group that had kidnapped the American heiress Patty Hearst. At one point group members were found barricaded in a house in Los Angeles and there was a big shoot-out. The police responded and eventually there was a fire that burned down the place that they were hiding in. Jim was on the scene of that. It was a very dangerous and challenging case. There isn’t much that can be said about the hostage situation without taking away from the reader’s enjoyment. Mina is a senior flight attendant, she is also mother to a 5 year old girl and an estranged wife. She is flying on the airline’s inaugural non-stop flight from London to Sydney. The atmosphere is buzzing and there are celebrities, journalists, social influencers and normal everyday people aboard the flight. It will take 20 hours to get to Sydney ... a lot can happen in 20 hours and when Mina is presented with a note from an anonymous passenger which basically gives her the choice to save the live of her daughter or those of our fellow passengers, her life turns upside down. What would you do? As you can tell by the title HOSTAGE it’s plain but not at all simple and straightforward as to why or how this hostage takes place. It soon unravels though. I like the use of different perspectives. At first I didn’t care about the passenger’s stories but it made sense later on which I thought was clever!

Thank you to SOURCEBOOKS Landmark and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own. There were so many brilliant surprises, twists and turns along the way making this a truly unforgettable story. I was constantly evaluating my thoughts on certain characters and felt bad when certain suspicions I had turned out to be entirely misplaced! The final reveal and the final chapter left me speechless! It was so incredibly clever and I just didn’t see it coming! The premise for this book is probably cliché in this day and age (and the movie based on this couldn't touch the emotion of the book)but when I first read this, I couldn't put it down. When Talley is the focus, you can't help but feel for him, he didn't want this situation and it's made worse when his family become involved. On the other hand, the thugs in the house are realistic, threatening and evil, something many authors fail to do. Released before hoodies were a thing of subculture, this book really lives up to the title thriller and you never know what will happen next. I liked the narrator’s storytelling skills and her pacing. However, she didn’t provide voice distinctions for the characters, except for Sophia, and I couldn’t always tell whose point of view I was hearing at the time. I’m still glad I chose the audio format as she told the story in a way that made it more exciting. What I didn't like is the audiobook! The publisher needs more than one narrator if the reader has one voice a.k.a NO VOICE TALENT. She shouldn't be cast for a multiple POVs story. I totally thought this is a LGBTQ couple and Mina calls her partner husband (yea Adam), but no wait...they were trying to have a baby so must be a he. Forget trying to differentiate any of the passengers. I didn't even try. Nine-year-old Sophia sounds just like mum and dad...what da hell...?I actually met Adam Dolnik at a conference in Turkey and he asked me to review his book and write a foreword for it, which I ended up doing. And I think it is a very interesting book because they examine primarily terrorist hostage sieges that occurred in Russia. For example, they looked at the Beslan school and Moscow theatre situations. Their premise is that the authorities are under-prepared to deal with the new terrorist, who is a bit more sophisticated in understanding how to manipulate law enforcement’s response.