Trapped

by Brooke Morgan

[Leah]

Ellie Walters is determined to get back on her feet after the break-up of her marriage. Now living on Cape Cod with her increasingly angry and troubled teenage son, Tim, she tentatively believes they can build a new life together. And when Ellie finds herself falling for her new neighbour’s son, Joe, she feels she can at last move on. Until, one day, elements connected to a tragic event in Ellie’s past – an event she has never been able to come to terms with – start appearing. It seems that someone is determined to make her suffer, all over again. Whilst a misunderstanding drives a rift between her and Joe and her relationship with Tim threatens to deteriorate completely, a confused and frightened Ellie seems powerless to stop what seems increasingly like a terrifying campaign of persecution. And Ellie is faced with the horrifying possibility that she’ll be trapped in this nightmare for ever…

Trapped is the second psychological thriller from American author Brooke Morgan and as soon as I heard the synopsis, I knew I had to read it. I absolutely adore books with a bit of mystery to them and if the mysterious nature of the book is well done, it can be a corker of a book. I was thrilled to finally receive my copy of Trapped and started it almost immediately, not knowing what to expect because I haven’t yet read Morgan’s first novel Tainted (although I do have the book).

The book opens by introducing us to Ellie as she’s about to go on a blind date. It seemed a strange starting point to the novel, but it turns out it’s actually a hugely important part of the book and sets the scene for everything to come. We know by the end of the first chapter that something really terrible happened to Ellie at some point in her life, and that she has recently been divorced from her husband Charlie. Ellie then decides, along with son Tim, to move to Bourne, a town she used to visit as a child and remembers it with fond memories. Once Ellie moves to Bourne though, strange things begin happening, all which appear to be connected to the terrible incident that happened years back. We learn what that was early on in the book, but I don’t want to spoil it for those looking to read the book. As Ellie begins to fear for her safety – and her sanity – and starts to question those closest to her, including new friend Louisa and her son Joe, it really became a race against time to uncover who it was that was behind the nastiness currently infecting her life.

The suspense throughout Trapped was really quite something. As the book progresses, the suspense level rises and rises until it is, quite literally, palpable. The book just becomes more and more intense and I really didn’t want to put it down. I wanted to continue reading, and find out who it was doing these nasty things to Ellie. I haven’t been so glued to a book in a long while, I have to tell you. I was reading chapters during my lunch break at work, it is just so well written that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading the book, wondering what would happen next in Ellie’s life.

I actually really liked Ellie. She is flawed, definitely, and admits to it, but there’s a vulnerability there that warmed me to her. Yes, something happened in the past, but Ellie more than paid for it, and to see it all come slamming back made me want to grab her and hide her away from it all. I thought her son Tim was an incredibly interesting character, too. He’s a typical fifteen-year-old, mad at the world, but when he wasn’t being an annoying teenager, when he was with Lauren, we got to know the real Tim. I didn’t really know what to make of Charlie, Ellie’s ex-husband, we know from Ellie he’s a bit of a control freak but is charming with it, so I never really clicked with him to be honest. Another character I loved though was Louisa, Ellie’s neighbour in Bourne. She was wonderful, and was the perfect tonic for Ellie. Louisa’s son, Joe, is the final character I’d like to mention and, again, I found him incredibly well written and I would definitely have liked to have seen him more.

As I mentioned above, the suspense builds throughout the book at quite a hefty pace and it barely lets up. When the suspense finally explodes, and we find out who was been behind everything that happened to Ellie since her move from Bourne, I was stunned. I had absolutely no clue about who it was, and when the penny finally dropped all I could think was ‘Wow’. I’ve no idea how Morgan pulled it off, but she did, and it all made perfect sense as soon as I read the explanations of everything. Those last few pages are really quite something, they’re hard to read don’t get me wrong, and I did find myself hoping and praying it would all come to an end, but it was completely engaging nevertheless. The book is told in the third-person point of view which works perfectly, switching from Ellie to Louisa to Tim and manages to build the story even more than if it was told entirely from Ellie’s point of view. There is an Epilogue in the book, which had me a bit puzzled but now I’ve had time to think it over, I think I know whose point of view it’s told from. Normally, an epilogue like that would irritate me, but on account of all the mysteriousness up until then, it kind of worked. Yes it bugs me, because I want to know for definite who it is, but it didn’t detract from the book until now. I didn’t feel disappointed reading it, I just felt even more intrigued. I hugely recommend the book, it was everything I wanted and more.