Just finished a fast paced thriller, No Exit by Taylor Adams and so can’t wait to share my insight with you all.

A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath.

A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?

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?

With exquisitely controlled pacing, Taylor Adams diabolically ratchets up the tension with every page. Full of terrifying twists and hairpin turns, No Exit will have you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless

Print Length: 287 pages

• Publisher: William Morrow (January 15, 2019)
• Publication Date: January 15, 2019
• Genre- Psychological Thriller

Taylor Adams directed the acclaimed short film And I Feel Fine in 2008 and graduated Eastern Washington University with the Excellence in Screenwriting Award and the prestigious Edmund G. Yarwood Award. His directorial work has screened at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival and his writing has been featured on KAYU-TV’s Fox Life blog. He has worked in the film/television industry for several years and lives in Washington state. EYESHOT is Adams’ debut novel, published by Joffe Books.

I have wanted to read this book for a while had been in want to read list. I finally found this book as an E-book on Scribd and so started reading it!

Darby Thorne is a sophomore from CU Boulder, who is driving from Boulder to Utah, as her mother is in the final stages of cancer and was at the hospital. While driving and due to to hazard of blizzard and the threat of closing the roads, Darby stops at a small rest in. In this small rest in also four other people, who are also stuck in the rest place because of the blizzard. While outside, trying to get a signal on her phone, she sees that inside one of the vans, a girl was being caged in a dog cage. Then begins the story, as to who is the one who is carrying a captive in a van.

So as usual, I will start with the ones I like about the book.

• This thriller is actually fast paced, which I liked about the book. Something is going on or going to happen in each of the chapter and so the author did a good job of keeping the reader hooked into the story
• To Darby, every four person is a suspect–Ashley, the talkative accountant, Ed a retired veterinarian and his cousin Sandi and Lars, a creepy teenage looking boy. We have no clue as to who is actually having a small girl as a captive in one of the vans. (I am not going to let too much info about that)
• Also, once Darby finds the real culprit, it becomes a cat and mouse chase and as a reader, we are wondering who is going to get out of the place alive or whether the girl inside the van will get saved.
• The author uses the hours and time as chapters in the book, beginning with the evening when Darby is driving and is stopping over at the rest in and ending in the dawn time.
• There were twists in each and every one of the chapters.
• To be honest, while reading the book, I thought I was in kind of a horror movie–an interesting horror movie, with no telephone signals stuck with a certain psycho so that actually made the reader feel tensed and at the edge of the seat.
• Like most psychological thrillers (nearly every protagonists in a psychological thriller is dealing with some personal issue), Darby is a vulnerable girl, who has some personal issues and a dysfunctional relationship with her mother and as a reader, you kind of feel sorry for the character as she herself (or even the reader) has no idea if she is able to save the little girl and save her life or die.
• The ending was a bit unexpected.

Now about the ones I didn’t like about the book.

• SPOILER ALERT!!!!! I am a bit confused about the ending. However I assumed that Darby is dead and Jay was talking to the ghost of Darby.
• It was a bit gory and disgusting when you are reading towards the end i.e. too much violence towards the end. I don’t really like violence much.

Overall, if you like a fast paced thriller, then No Exit is for you. Worth four stars in my opinion.