At under 300 pages – it’s such a quick read… why not?
Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for a total escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives, she’s pleasantly surprised to find that the owner is a handsome man by the name of Calvin Wells. But there are things Grace discovers that she’s not too pleased about: A lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the town.
Despite her uneasiness and misgivings from Calvin’s friends and family, the two grow close and start to fall for one another. However, as her departure date nears, things between them start to change for the worse. Grace grows wary of Calvin as his infatuation for her seems to turn into obsession. Calvin fears that Grace is hiding something from him.
This book doesn’t seem really loved by many. I can totally get that. From the cop out, fake twist ending to the totally cringe romance killer vibe this book is absolutely all over the place.
I’m trying to decide if “ reading” this through an audiobook hurt or help to the book. I did think the quality of the audiobook was well done. It switched from a male narrator to a female narrator based on the POV. Both narrators didn’t do any annoying voices or inflections that gets on my nerves sometimes.
On the same token, I could hear the tone of creepiness. Creepy might be the wrong word. A better word might be cringe. Was it the narrators making this creepy, awkward and uncomfortable? Or was it literally the writing?
I’d like to lean the writing was the tension I felt because I do find it hard to understand the angle of a kidnapper/murder romance.
Maybe if I’m really reaching here, I can see how there was a dominance style romance and then we tie that in to the big twist at the end? Wow, I am really reaching here.
Anyways, this wasn’t the best book. Sloppily put together maybe? For an audiobook it was easy listening for me. I’m not consistently listening to my audiobooks so I can’t have a complex story that requires me to remember every little detail as we go along. So although this wasn’t the best book, I’ll stand by my rating.
I would not recommend this to my reader friends.
Stats: 292 pages – First published April 25, 2023
cmacs paperbacks 
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