Land of the Living by Nicci French

Land of the Living

by Nicci French

Abbie Devereaux wakes in the dark. She is hooded and bound, with no idea where she is or how she got there. Kept alive by a man she never sees, his only promise is that eventually he will kill her - like the others.

But Abbie has spirit and bloody-mindedness on her side. She counts the seconds spent alone and plots her survival. Above all she dreams of returning to normal, careless, everyday life - the land of the living.

Grasping at memories, Abbie recalls snatches of her identity, her career, and her disintegrating relationship with her boyfriend. Is there a connection between her real life and the voice in the darkness? And how can she survive in a place where fear becomes madness and the effort to survive seems too much to bear?

Reviewed by celinenyx on

1 of 5 stars

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I had to read this book for my English class, and that kind of ruins everything (it even made reading the Hobbit boring), but that aside, I didn't think this was a good book at all.

The writing was fine. The editing was fine. The point of view was fine. Even the characters were okay. It was the plot that bothered me.

It starts off interesting: Abbi awakes, doesn't know how she got there or why she's bound and hooded. Then she spends pages and pages being afraid and, well, tortured. Then she escaped.

And that's when the story takes a total unrealistic turn. Abbi just runs around being crazy, finds out she left her whole life behind for no reason. She leaves her friends because they don't believe something happened (and to be honest, I started doubting her too; I'm not sure if this was the writers intention or not, but if it was, they did a good job).

Some spoilers ahead: those few last days she finally manages to reconstruct are just ridiculous. It's totally out of character and a strange thing for a person to do. Live with someone you don't know? And then the conclusion... talk about a failure. The writers could have saved the book by making a believable ending, but they manage to make the whole search for her captor pointless. Good for her that she saves that other girl, but to be honest, I didn't really care at that point any more. And pushing your thumbs in some ones eyes? That's just plain disgusting. Complete let-down.

I wouldn't suggest this book to anyone. Just go read something else. There are way better thrillers out there than this one. I will read something else of Nicci French in the future, to see if my problem was just with this particular plot or with the writers, but I won't be breaking my neck to get my hands on one.

*****

I just noticed the other reviews about this book, and I just can't disagree more. Realistic? Really?! I don't know how many people you know that leave their normal lives behind, go crazy and spend all their money, decide to live with a total stranger, get hit on the head and held captive for no reason, then manage to escape, and forget how they got there in the first place!
And, no, this isn't a light or fast read. It took me days to wade through this over the top "no one believes me!" crap.

Don't get tricked into reading it like me. It will let you down.

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  • 7 May, 2010: Reviewed