Gdy tylko zobaczyłam tą książkę w kiosku, jako dodatek do jakiegoś kobiecego magazynu, wiedziałam, że ta książka mi się spodoba. I nie pomyliłam się. Pochłonęłam ją w kilka godzin. Zaczęłam dość późno, przez co zamiast iść spać, czytałam dalej. Bo byłam zaciekawiona, zaintrygowana, zafascynowana historią.

 

Ok, przyznam, iż kilka rzeczy mnie w ogóle nie zaskoczyło. Przede wszystkim pewne rozwiązanie sytuacji zostawione na koniec, które miało chyba dać efekt "wow, to niemożliwe". Akurat tą jedną rzecz podejrzewałam od początku. Ale może oglądam za dużo thrillerów, choć ostatnio przyznam, iż ten gatunek jakoś omijam. Nie celowo, ale zawsze się trafi coś innego do oglądnięcia, przeczytania. Coś, co chciałam poznać już wcześniej. Ale nadal lubię thrillery, ten dreszczyk emocji, który towarzyszy mi podczas lektury. Tutaj towarzyszył mi przez cały czas.

 

Akcja rozgrywa się w czasie rzeczywistym, ale nie brakuje też retrospekcji. Bohaterką, która jest też narratorem jest Sara - jedna z dziewczyn porwanych przez psychopatę. Wydarzenia mają miejsce dziesięć lat po uwolnieniu się dziewczyn z rąk człowieka, który je przetrzymywał w piwnicy. Sara wciąż nie pogodziła się z przeszłością. Nagle przyszedł czas, by znów zajrzała do wspomnień i wróciła do traumatycznych przeżyć.

 

Lekturę przeczytałam bardzo szybko. Ma prosty język. Fabuła wciąga już od pierwszej strona. Historia jest ciekawa. Czytamy nie tylko o tym, co się wydarzyło, co się dzieje w czasie rzeczywistym, ale poznajemy też Sarę, jej lęki, jej traumy. Sara jest dziewczyną, której od początku się współczuje. Jej lęki są zrozumiałe, przez to, co przeszła. Czułam w stosunku do niej przede wszystkim współczucie. Całkiem inaczej miałam w stosunku do dziewczyn, z którymi była w piwnicy. Owszem, im też współczułam. Ale przede wszystkim cieszyłam się, że potrafiły wrócić do normalnego życia, choć to na pewno było trudne, bardzo trudne.

 

Fabuła trzyma w napięciu. Przeszłość jest ciekawa, ale teraźniejszość jest pełna akcji i niebezpieczeństwa. Każdy krok Sary wzbudzał u mnie niepokój. Czułam, że coś się wydarzy niedobrego. Naprawdę się bardzo wciągnęłam w historię, która pokazuje, iż czasem choć robimy wszystko, co ma nas uchronić od niebezpieczeństwa, i tak wpakowujemy się w kłopoty. Sara i Jennifer działały według schematów, które mają im przynieść bezpieczne życie. Miały zrobioną listę "Nigdy", czyli w punktach wypisały, co nigdy nie mogą zrobić. A i tak trafiły w ręce psychopaty.

 

Retrospekcji nie było tak dużo jak myślałam, że ich będzie. Jednak każda z nich pokazywała grozę, w której dziewczyny się znajdowały. Opisy tortur nie były dokładnie opisane. Lecz to nie wystarczyło, by wyobraźnia nie dodała obrazów dziewczyn przeżywających piekło. Aż dziwne, że nie śniły mi się koszmary.

 

Jeśli chodzi o postać psychopaty. Idealnie wpasowuje się w schemat, który mam w głowie, gdy myślę o takich osobach. Na zewnątrz idealny: sąsiad, pracownik, przyjaciel. Potrafi sprawić, że ludzie go lubią słuchają. Zaś wewnątrz zamienia się potwora. Nikt z otoczenia nie pomyślałby sobie, że ta osoba potrafi nadawać cierpienie, ból. Nikt nie wpadłby na to, że taka osoba kogoś przetrzymuje. Właśnie taki jest psychopata z książki. Idealnie wpasowujący się w opinię o psychopatach. Co najgorsze, nie miał na tyle traumatycznych przeżyć, by go móc jakoś usprawiedliwić. Po prostu był zły, miał chore fantazje, które zechciał realizować.

 

Książkę polecam. Dużo czasu się przy niej nie traci. Świat wykreowany przez autorkę jest wciągający, bohaterowie ciekawi. I choć czasem dzieją się w niej nieprawdopodobne zdarzenia, ja na nie nie zwróciłam uwagi, gdyż była ona zbyt pochłonięta wydarzeniami, które właśnie poznawałam.

So I picked up this book because it was bargain priced at Barnes & Noble.  Let me just say that I am happy that I did not pay full price for this book.  I expected this book to be one of those books that would be tough to get through because of the topic but it would be worth it in the end.  It wasn't one of those books at all.  This story was all over the place in my opinion.  The characters were annoying and the plot just had too much.  The goal of the main character changed so many times and it was ridiculous.  This book was so slow moving in the beginning and it just annoyed me.  The only part that I did like about this book was what happened with the main character's friend Jennifer.  I will not say what happened, but it was unexpected and it took me off guard.  

This book is eh so far.  I feel like it gets dragged on in some parts.

"Captivity does things to you. It shows you how base an animal you can be. How you'd do anything to stay alive and suffer a little bit less than the day before."

One of my initial thoughts after finishing the book, and perhaps a subtext to the whole relevance of the plot, was how big of a role social media plays in the day-to-day of the majority of people's lives today. How innocent it may seem in the present it can eventually lead to unfortunate circumstances in the future if observed by the wrong person. At a time when the Internet gives many people the opportunity to reveal any and all secrets, there are a few who take every nugget of disclosed information to use to their advantage to inflict harm in any way they can. This book will make you think twice about who, how, where, and why you reveal personal information that could determine your fate with a rather systematic approach that you wouldn’t see coming. This is a book about how paralyzing fear can be and how overcoming it can lead to a freedom that has been long lost.

With no background or expectations of the book, let me tell you all how I came to buy The Never List by Koethi Zan. I went to my local secondhand everything shop looking to buy some new looking old clothes (and yes this is a thing). Being a guy it probably doesn't surprise the most of you that I hate shopping for clothes let alone spending a crazy amount of money on jeans that you can get elsewhere for a quarter of the price. So as quickly as I stepped through the threshold of the store I had about four pairs of stylish jeans, one of which was a tad too long, one that was a little too baggy, and two that were just right. Really the jeans were just a diversion to my initial point of arrival which was the attention-grabbing book section. With a promotion of five books for the price of four deal where the price of books range from $1.99 to $4.99 you really can't go wrong. It is the perfect situation for a bibliophile on a budget and I get excited every time. While I avoided the all-too-common James Patterson, Dan Brown, Robert Ludlum, and Joyce Carol Oates. I did happen to get suckered in and get the equally and widely obtainable A Farewell to Arms and Atonement. While covering some of the classics I did manage to snag a few that interested me in the Valley of the Dolls due to the prescription pills pop culture classic, Foe for its complex narrative, and The Never List. With the last book I was hoping for something as seedy and gripping as Gone Girl, it was also a book I never had on any of my to-buy-next lists so I became intrigued with the unknown. To say I was disappointed would most definitely be an understatement.

"They didn't understand how much safer it felt to have crowds of people right outside my door at all times. In New York City, I tried to explain, there is always someone to hear you scream. And better still were the glorious advantages of a doorman building in a city that never slept."

Mentally, Jennifer hasn't been the same since being injured in the car accident that left her mom dead and her best friend Sarah seriously injured. By proxy Sarah has made it a goal in the both of their lives to never put themselves in situations where the level of certainty is unknown. Living a life of freedom, ignorance, and childish oblivion from any troubles seems like a few lifetimes ago for these two young girls. Now their reality is one of paranoia and preparation for possible disasters. They've become fascinated with tragedies accounting for every possible death; it's statistic, it's preventive measure, and warning sign. These two woman are the last you would think to see on the local 6' o clock news. But one misstep and period of complacency would find them on the headline news and spend years regretting the time they bent their own rules for their survival.

"The only other human I would dare touch. Who was the lucky one here? I wondered. Jennifer didn't have to be alone anymore, while I was here, locked in my own box, a solitary figure unable to let anyone in. Sealed up as tight as a drum, with nothing but phobias and paranoia to guide me. Broken. Unfixable. Trapped."

There are a few different dynamics going on in The Never List with respect to narrative and time-setting that are not high on the complexity scale, but they should be pointed out. The primary narrative is one of Sarah Farber who has now changed her name to Caroline Morrow ten years after her escape from captivity of a sadistic, tortuous, and perverted man dubbed by the media as Professor Pain after his subsequent arrest. If you thought Sarah was a psychological wonderland before the abduction with anxiety, paranoia, and other neuroses, well now she has gone into full-blown isolation with post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive, agoraphobia, fear of touch, curtains drawn and keeping the outside out. She is able to sustain her low-standard of living by working as a life insurance agent from home, she is able to go through the healing process through in-home counseling with her psychologist Dr.Simmonds and keeping her tormentor behind bars with the aid of FBI agent Jim McCordy. Periodically throughout the rest of the book you get flashbacks of Sarah and Jennifer's life before as children and young adults before the abduction as well as life during their time chained in the cellar. I would have liked to have read more about how this psychology professor was able to manipulate the girls. You really only read about how he become motivated and how he achieved the end game, but not much about his processes. Not that I need detailed descriptions, but more knowledge of the matter would have gone a long way in enhancing and supporting the tone it was trying to set.

"I stopped at a gas station on the way down, taking advantage of what appeared to be an unusually pristine BP right outside of town. I noticed with no small satisfaction that the attendant was locked away from me behind plexiglass. If only everyone could be like that."

Some of the confounding aspects of the book was that I found it hard to believe how instantaneous a woman like Sarah can turn into a criminal investigator given her traumatic history. She goes from a solitary person to a woman breaking into barns, traveling to unknown cities and going to fetishist retreats with people she doesn't know based solely on the delivery of a letter. You get the feeling that she has already accepted death and has given way to horrible decision making. Her change was too fast to be realistic, but you would expect nothing less from an author trying to write a thrilling tale. I must admit that it would be boring to read about a woman’s constant indecision, but there was not enough of a slow progression to make it plausible.

This is a cautionary tale about relying too heavily on safety measures against the world's evils and letting your guard down during a moment of complacency. This isn't a horrible read but it really didn't alter in its evolution. The story never lost its flow, but it didn't do or say anything to gain any momentum either. It truly stayed the course falling into line with expectations that were conceived from the start and ended with few surprises. In the end I was hoping for more.

"Or is it the case that no one ever truly gets over anything? Is there really that much pain and suffering continuing right now at this minute, in millions of hearts, in bodies carrying on the burden of existence, trying to smile through tears for fleeting, passing moments here and there - when when they can forget what happened to them, maybe ever for whole hours at a time? Maybe that's what it is to live."