Title: The Prisoner
Author: B. A. Paris
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 394
Rating: 4/5
This is my second B. A. Paris book after I read and loved Behind Closed Doors. This one is much the same, and in fact Paris seems to have made a career out of writing about female characters who find themselves trapped in relationships that look “normal” to the outside world.
In this one, our main character Amelie ends up marrying someone as part of a scheme that theoretically should benefit both of them. She’ll get paid the £100,000 she needs to train to become a lawyer, while her new husband will be able to get his parents off his back so that he doesn’t have to take part in an arranged marriage.
Of course, with B. A. Paris, nothing is ever quite that simple.
The narrative hops backwards and forwards through time but in such a manner that it’s easy enough to follow, and there’s a good reason for it. It allows Paris to slowly reveal the backstory without dropping it all on you up front, and yet she does it in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling cheated.
So, what happens? Well, Amelie and her new husband get kidnapped shortly after their wedding day, and they’re held incommunicado as the kidnappers make their demands known. We don’t actually see too much of Ned, and certainly not through his eyes. But that’s okay because Amelie is a fascinating character to see the story from.
She’s super resilient, mostly because of her tricky past, and while she’s the victim at the beginning of the story, she’s very much able to have her revenge. In fact, apart from the PTSD and the fact that most of her friends are dead, she comes out pretty well considering what might well have happened.
All in all then, this book is a great reminder of what B. A. Paris does best. It’s one of those books where it’s hard to put down because there’s always something about to happen. It’s not as though there’s a huge build up and then a big pay-off. Rather, there are constant build-ups and payoffs throughout, almost like a Dan Brown novel.
And so if you get a chance to pick this one up, it’s definitely worth doing. It’s a cracker.
