Book info

• Title Land of the Living
• Author Nicci French
• Year 2002
• Genre Thriller

You wake in the dark, gagged and bound. A man visits you, feeds you. And tells you that he will kill you - just like all the rest. Abbie Devereaux doesn't know where she is or how she got there. She's so terrified she can barely remember her own name - and she's sure of just one thing: that she will survive this nightmare. But even if she does make it back to the land of the living, Abbie knows that he'll still be out there, looking for her. And next time, there may be no escape...

Thoughts

This felt like it had elements of other Nicci French novels all intertwined together, and it was a good read perhaps because of that. The story works backwards in a sense, as our heroine has memory loss following a horrific incident. Kidnapped and prepared to die, she manages to escape and then has to try and piece back together the fragments of her life and how it went so drastically wrong.

There’s also the aspect in which the authorities don’t quite believe what they are hearing and can’t really do anything to help, despite the fact we know she’s telling the truth. That’s intensely frustrating, both as a reader and just as a human being.

I enjoyed the book, whipped through it super fast. I thought the initial chapters dragged a little too much, there’s only so much horror I actually want to read about. It was better for me when the twists and turns of redemption began. But overall, very good.

Rating: 4 / 5