This year has been a difficult one for me, as it has been for most people. Often when I find myself troubled, I start diving into my books. For whatever reason, I have found it so tough to concentrate during this pandemic and economic meltdown that reading juts isn’t an option. I heard about The Chain on a website (possibly pajiba.com, but I cannot be sure) and thought it sounded interesting.
The book arrived and I devoured it in a day. Was this the greatest novel ever written? No, but it helped fill a need I had where I wanted to immerse myself in a fun engaging story with characters I liked. The concept is a simple one, a woman, down on her luck a bit, receives a phone call that her daughter has been kidnapped and she has to raise a large, but not impossible, sum of money to have her returned and then she has to kidnap another child. The caller who kidnapped her child has had her child kidnapped also and her child will only be released once this woman has completed her tasks.
As a parent, I have often wondered, to what lengths would I go to save or protect my kid. This novel takes that concept and pushes it to its boundaries. Is this realistic? Not in the slightest, as the Chain described in this story could not continue to operate very long and the people enmeshed in their web would either fail in their tasks or eventually break and contact the authorities.
Doesn’t really matter as this is a fun engaging read that you can read, turn your mind off a bit, and just enjoy the ride. Think of it as a novel equivalent of a roller coaster. Definitely recommended for fans of the thriller/mystery genre