gmcgregor
Written on May 2, 2016
It turns out to be much, much worse than that: he gets a ransom note from her kidnappers demanding a sum he can't possibly produce to ensure her safe return. Andres is forced to reach out to his long-estranged mother for help. She connects him with a man who negotiates with kidnappers for a living...in fact, this man recently helped secure the release of Andres' first love, Elena, the woman he (and his parents) had always expected him to marry. While the plot progresses forward through the negotiations to get Marabela back and Andres' reconnection with Elena when he finds out she's in a mental hospital to deal with the fallout from her own abduction, it also looks backwards to show the reader the relationships between Andres, Elena, and Marabela, and how things got to where they were right before Marabela was kidnapped.
This is an enjoyable, if not especially substantial, book. The subject matter is a little too heavy for a beach read, but otherwise about that level: good but not great, decently-written but not special, compelling enough to keep your attention but can easily be put down. The plot moves along at a nice clip and doesn't drag, characters aren't flat but aren't deep and rich, either. The ending ties its loose strings into knots too easily, but not in a way that's infuriating, just kind of annoying (I wish there'd been a little more ambiguity left in it). I liked reading it, but it didn't make much of an impact on me. This is worth a read, but isn't unmissable.