Hostage - Clare Mackintosh

[goodreads]

Title: Hostage
Author: Clare Mackintosh
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 400
Date read: July 2021

You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of 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. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply.

It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.


Captivating and very difficult to put down. Definitely a literal pageturner as I had to figure out how it all fit together. However, I did have a few issues with it. First of all, both Mina and Adam were way too secretive towards the reader. There was absolutely NO reason for it to take as long as it did before their secrets were revealed, and it seemed a bit like Claire Mackintosh was being coy just for the sake of it.

Secondly, the hostage situation seemed unrealistic and far fetched. Far too much hinged on pretty random events, and it didn't sound like they had a plan B in place at all.

That said, I loved the ending! I had feared it would be a repeat of the epilogue in "The Book of You" (which soured the entire book for me), but instead it showed us exactly just how smart Sophia is.... unrealistically so, to be sure - but satisfying, so I'll take it :-D