HOSTAGE by Clare Mackintosh
Sourcebooks Landmark; 6/22/21
CBTB Rating: 4/5 Stars
The Verdict: A page-turning, high-stakes thriller
After a brief hiatus from crime fiction, author Clare Mackintosh returns to the genre this week with HOSTAGE, a psychological thriller that takes a claustrophobic “locked room”-style premise and sets it aboard a long-haul flight from London to Sydney. A relatively ordinary day at work takes an extraordinary turn for flight attendant Mina when she receives a threatening note from a passenger with a terrifying ultimatum: follow the anonymous passenger’s instructions and help ensure the plane never reaches its destination, or Mina’s young daughter will pay the price. It’s an immediately arresting and horrifying dilemma. Will Mina save the lives of the innocent passengers aboard her plane, or save the life of her beloved young daughter? Clare Mackintosh weaves a gripping story brimming with unreliable characters, shifting points of view, and a terrifying dilemma at its core. A jaw-dropping final reveal in the book’s Epilogue ties this book together with true Mackintosh flair. Clare Mackintosh has become a staple of my personal suspense library over the years, and while HOSTAGE may not be my absolute favorite Mackintosh release (that title still belongs to her debut, I Let You Go!), it nevertheless proves itself a worthy addition to any suspense reader’s collection. It’s a thrill to have Clare Mackintosh back writing crime fiction, and HOSTAGE delivers major entertainment value and edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Plot Details:
From New York Times bestselling author Clare Mackintosh comes a claustrophobic thriller set over 20 hours on-board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.
Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems with her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. 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: "The following instructions will save your daughter's life..."
Someone needs Mina's assistance and knows exactly how to make her comply.
When one passenger is killed and then another, Mina knows she must act. But which lives does she save: Her passengers...or her own daughter and husband who are in grave distress back at home?
It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.
The question at the heart of HOSTAGE is devastating in its simplicity: if you had to choose, would you sacrifice one person you love to save the lives of hundreds of strangers? For Mackintosh’s unwitting protagonist Mina, a theoretical ethical dilemma is about to become her terrifying reality. Mina is a down-to-earth and relatable woman who comes face to face with an unthinkable horror when her daughter’s life is threatened. When we meet her, Mina’s home life is rocky at best: she suspects her husband Adam of having an affair, and is struggling to connect with her young daughter, Sophia. One day, desperate to get away from the simmering tension at home, Mina begs a coworker at the airline she works for to trade shifts with her. The coworker agrees, and Mina finds herself aboard her airline’s inaugural long-haul flight from London to Sydney. Twenty hours in the sky, removed from the pressures and worries of her domestic troubles, focused instead on fulfilling the duties of her job, might be just what Mina needs to clear her head. But things take a devastating turn when Mina receives an anonymous, threatening note from a passenger on her plane. The message is clear: Mina must follow this anonymous passenger’s instructions, or her daughter Sophia will be harmed. Suddenly, the thrilling adventure of working as a flight attendant on a history-making long-haul flight becomes a desperate race to unmask a villain and find a way out of a horrific ultimatum before innocent lives are lost. With the clock ticking down, Mina finds herself in an impossible situation that she has only 20 hours to solve.
Clare Mackintosh is an author who I can always count on to never write the same book twice, and that holds true with her newest release, HOSTAGE. HOSTAGE is a thriller infused with the claustrophobia of a locked room mystery, the tension and interpersonal secrets of domestic noir, and the high stakes of an action thriller. This gripping combination results in a truly page-turning experience: HOSTAGE is the kind of book that actually will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. Central to the story’s tension is a cast of characters whose murky motivations and ever-shifting alliances will keep you on your toes, never quite sure who to trust—and who might be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The central figures in this book, Mina and her husband Adam, dominate the majority of the book’s points of view; readers follow Mina’s up-to-the-minute narration from the air, as she realizes the impossible situation she is being faced with, and they also follow Adam, Mina’s husband, as he grapples not only with his rocky relationship but also with serious setbacks in his professional life. Mackintosh expertly explores the grey areas in her characters’ lives, bringing them to life on the page. Adding to the character-driven intrigue of HOSTAGE are an assortment of chapters sprinkled throughout the book that are narrated by passengers on Mina’s flight. If I had to pick a single favorite element of HOSTAGE, these passenger-focused chapters would be it. I loved the tantalizing insights these chapters provide into the strangers on board Mina’s plane, and I similarly loved the little hints Mackintosh doles out through these chapters that not everyone on the plane can be trusted. These chapters provide a snapshot into the lives of strangers whose fates are more tightly woven than any one of them could have imagined, and readers will be hooked on the brief-yet-impactful insights into their inner lives that these chapters provide. Mackintosh is an expert at character development, and the shadowy motives and sinister alliances between her characters will keep readers on their toes.
It’s impossible to discuss this book’s ending without risking major spoilers (and as always, I would never do that to you!), so I will have to speak in broad terms here, but there are a number of elements to the finale of HOSTAGE that bear exploring, as much as we can do so in a spoiler-free fashion. In HOSTAGE, Mackintosh tackles a high-stakes crisis that truly is facing our world today. It’s an ambitious premise for a thriller, but it was the one element of the book that I wasn’t sure quite delivered the impact I had hoped for. So much of HOSTAGE lives in the intimate spaces between people - whether the domestic strains of suspected infidelity or the moral and ethical crisis faced by a character forced to weigh the “value” of strangers’ lives - and the shift in focus from this urgent and highly personal suspense to something no less pressing but decidedly more far-reaching didn’t quite deliver the satisfying reveal I had hoped. However, just when I thought I knew how this story was going to end, Mackintosh swooped in with one of her trademark jaw-dropping moments, sneaking in an Epilogue to HOSTAGE that, for me, was worth the price of entry on this book alone. Mackintosh excels at crafting stories driven by interpersonal secrets, and when she leans into that space in her newest thriller, HOSTAGE shines.
HOSTAGE is a page-turning thriller that delivers entertainment value and up-all-night-reading tension and suspense. As ever, Clare Mackintosh excels at giving readers a suspense novel driven by the secrets and murky motivations of her characters. Pick this book up if you’re in the market for high-stakes thrills—just consider reading this one with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions my own.
Book Details:
Publisher : Sourcebooks Landmark (June 22, 2021)
Language : English
Hardcover : 368 pages
ISBN-10 : 1728245524
ISBN-13 : 978-1728245522
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