When Tsara Adelman leaves her husband and two young children for a weekend to visit her estranged uncle, she little dreams he is holding several local children captive on his lavish estate. Mike Westbrook, father of one of the boys, kidnaps her to trade her life for the children’s. Soon Tsara and Mike are fleeing through New Hampshire’s mountain wilderness pursued by two rogue cops with murder on … on their minds.
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“Wrong Place, Wrong Time” was not what I expected. The book was about a housewife and mother, who is kidnapped for the purpose of a hostage swap. The abductor is a single father trying to obtain leverage to to get his son back. Typically, this would be a premise that I would be intrigued in and a story that would hold my interest. However, for some reason, it fell flat.
Tsara, the kidnappee and main character, is abducted fairly early in the story. Perhaps this is why I couldn’t seem to connect with her. I’m a mother of 2 kids just like her, yet I never felt like she was ever REALLY in danger. I never felt fear or anticipation of a climax from her experience. It was just happening and I was reading about it.
Mike, the kidnapper and supporting lead character, held a lot more interest for me. I felt more of an attachment to him and his situation. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t really told from his view point. And honestly, I’m not sure that it would have worked out to be a better story to have had Mike as the focal point. His just seemed like a better story, and him, and more interesting character.
The first half of the book is about the kidnapping. The second, about the aftermath. I am typically all for a good abduction story, love Stockholm Syndrome tales and the like. However, in the case of “Wrong Place, Wrong Time,” I was more interested in the aftermath. Without giving anything away, I was pleased with how things turned out, though it did seem to be a foregone conclusion by the time you were about 25% in to the book. And speaking of length, this was a long one, nearly 500 pages on my Nook. I can’t imagine what could have been removed, but there many times while reading, that I thought it should have been much shorter.
Overall, this was just an ok read for me.
Tsara has been estranged with her uncle for years and years but when he invites her to party at his lavish estate, she decides to go and make amends, specially when her husband convinces her to go and enjoy the weekend by herself as he would stay home with the kids. When she gets to her uncles estate things goes perfectly fine until the first night when she gets kidnapped. While she is kidnapped she ends up learning that her kidnapper is Mike Westbrook, who ends up been a father of one of the local kids that her uncle is holding captive. Mike kidnaps Tsara in order for her uncle to release his son.
What her uncle ends up doing is sending the two town cops who are murderers and set out in search for her and Mike with only one thing on their minds; to murder them in order to keep them quiet about what is happening at her uncles house.
Throughout the book we see how Tsara and Mike travel from through NH’s mountains and how FBI gets involved and how her husband and brother worrying more about her. I really enjoying this book and how we got to see how Tsara and Mike’s relationship evolved from victim and kidnapper to somewhat friendlier, nothing romantic for once. Not going to lie that somehow the book felt like it drag a little, but it had a good ending and you got to see how someone copes after a kidnap.
An overall a good read. 4 out of 5 starts.