I had to read this book for my English class, and that kind of ruins everything (it even made reading the Hobbit boring), but that aside, I didn't think this was a good book at all.The writing was fine. The editing was fine. The point of view was fine. Even the characters were okay. It was the plot that bothered me.It starts off interesting: Abbi awakes, doesn't know how she got there or why she's bound and hooded. Then she spends pages and pages being afraid and, well, tortured. Then she escaped.And that's when the story takes a total unrealistic turn. Abbi just runs around being crazy, finds out she left her whole life behind for no reason. She leaves her friends because they don't believe something happened (and to be honest, I started doubting her too; I'm not sure if this was the writers intention or not, but if it was, they did a good job). Some spoilers ahead: those few last days she finally manages to reconstruct are just ridiculous. It's totally out of character and a strange thing for a person to do. Live with someone you don't know? And then the conclusion... talk about a failure. The writers could have saved the book by making a believable ending, but they manage to make the whole search for her captor pointless. Good for her that she saves that other girl, but to be honest, I didn't really care at that point any more. And pushing your thumbs in some ones eyes? That's just plain disgusting. Complete let-down. I wouldn't suggest this book to anyone. Just go read something else. There are way better thrillers out there than this one. I will read something else of Nicci French in the future, to see if my problem was just with this particular plot or with the writers, but I won't be breaking my neck to get my hands on one.*****I just noticed the other reviews about this book, and I just can't disagree more. Realistic? Really?! I don't know how many people you know that leave their normal lives behind, go crazy and spend all their money, decide to live with a total stranger, get hit on the head and held captive for no reason, then manage to escape, and forget how they got there in the first place!And, no, this isn't a light or fast read. It took me days to wade through this over the top "no one believes me!" crap. Don't get tricked into reading it like me. It will let you down.
The first fifty pages of Nicci French’s Land of the Living are very suspenseful and terrifying. The story centers upon twenty five year old Abigail Devereaux, an office space consultant. The reader is introduced to her as she wakes up bound and gagged in the darkness, her eyes covered with a hood. Abbie has no idea where she is or what has happened to her. She can’t remember anything of the last few weeks. It is all blank.After Abbie manages to escape, very few people believe her tale of kidnapping and imprisonment, especially since there does not seem to be any evidence. She has a couple of allies in Detective Inspector Jack Cross and neurologist Charles Mulligan but many think she is crazy and that the kidnapping was a fantasy. Even her friends, who lend her money and give her a place to stay, are not totally convinced it happened.Frustrated with the slow pace of the investigation, Abbie takes matters into her own hands to find her prisoner. She has to rely on clues, such as receipts and phone messages to piece together the time she cannot recall. Unfortunately, I found some of the choices and decisions she makes to be unbelievable. For instance, she drives off to an isolated location with a man (Ben) that she does not remember and she does not tell anyone where she is going. She never tells anyone where she is going or what she is doing – which I felt was unrealistic if you have just been kidnapped and missing for days. I knew that the author could not keep up that frantic pace that marks the beginning Land of Living but the rest of the novel is fairly fast paced and quick. The ending is kind of blah but Abbie does take charge of the situation which is fun to see. I will rate this novel high because of the amazing beginning. And I will probably try more of Nicci French’s books in the future.
What do You think about Land Of The Living (2015)?
Contrary to most of the critical reviewers here I thought it was the first part that started to drag along. You got your initial situation and after a while it got a bit (view spoiler)['yeah captured woman is captured' (hide spoiler)]
—Bontos Burgos
I've had Nicci French books sitting on my shelves since 2004 (from the days when I was a member of BCA).Those who know me will know that I'm an aspiring author of romance and happy-ever-afters (HEAs) and that's the genre I've been focusing on reading for the past, goodness knows how many years.Earlier this summer I reached a point where I couldn't bear to read pure romance any more. It was as though I'd overdosed with it - I actually felt nauseous at the thought of picking one up. I hasten to add that this was NOT a symptom or reflection on the romance/chick-lit genres. AT ALL. I admit that I felt a bit fearful for a time (thankfully this only lasted a couple of months) because I wondered whether I might have lost my love for both the reading *and* (which was equally devastating) the writing of romance.I can now look back with retrospect and understand that I just needed to give myself a break...and that was when I picked up a Nicci French from my shelf...From the moment I opened Land Of The Living and from the very first word, I was hooked...and remained so for the entire book.The story is utterly chilling, gripping and full of what nightmares are made of; yet it's grounded in the 'real' world. Nicci French skilfully weaves in the horror of a situation, filled with insights from the characters, to leave the reader seeing how such incidents can affect and change a victim for the rest of their life.What most surprised me in Land of the Living is that is didn't leave me feeling depressed. It's a darker, edgier story than my usual reading material, but although the author starts in a chilling place she doesn't leave you there.I'm very much looking forward to catching up with her backlist of books.
—Susan
This is a chilling, very realistic book by the collaborative voice of two journalists under the pseudonym Nicci French. Abbie Devereaux wakes up somewhere in the dark, wrists tied, ankles tied, gagged and blinded with a sack. She can't remember the past week. Her kidnapper tells her he's going to kill her, that he's killed other woman just like her, and there's nothing she can do about it. She is going to die. In desperation, Abbie tries to hang herself with the ropes she's tied to, and breaks them instead. She escapes. But once in the real world, she's still not safe. For one, nobody believes she was kidnapped, and no one can find her kidnapper. For two, everything about the life she remembers has changed: her boyfriend is now her ex, she's living somewhere else, she quit her job, her personality was changed entirely...This is all worsened by evidence that she's actually loosing her mind.The great thing about this book is that Abbie is so ordinary and instinctive that everything she feels or does makes complete sense. You become Abbie. And so you feel her doubt: what happened was real, wasn't it? She's not crazy, is she? With a creepy aura of deja vu, Abbie finds herself retracing her exact steps from the week before her amnesia, and she struggles to understand - who was she? why did she change? who is she now? The more she learns, the less anyone believes her. The less she believes herself. The more she knows the trail has to end, somewhere. This is the kind of book you can't get out of your head even weeks after you'd finished reading it. Abbie is a vulnerable but internally strong character I empathized with right away. The story is edgy without being horrifying, filled with a sense of doom, inevitability, and grim determination - the ending is climatic and shocking, but fully satisfying as well. Downside: there was none, as far as I can remember. Abbie's steamy but short romance with Ben is the only reason I didn't give this five stars, and that's my personal preference for modesty.
—Creative A
