Taylor Adams | NO EXIT

Plot (via Goodreads):

On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside, are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.

Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.

Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?

There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?

Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.

But who can she trust?

Review:

I like to consider myself someone who can really find some hidden gems in the crime fiction and thriller world. As someone who loves a good mystery and suspense novel, I love to do the research to find the hottest new titles and authors to cover on my blog. Fortunately, every now and then a book just takes Bookstagram by storm and before you know it, everyone is talking about it. A couple of months ago, NO EXIT by Taylor Adams was this novel. Everyone was reading it and everyone was loving it. I was curious and obsessed with the opportunity to experience this story. Not that I am proud of it, but if I'm judging this book by its cover - I was already in love. 

Taylor Adams took 48 hours of my life by storm with a novel that is about a storm. I was taken back with how quickly I found myself loving this story. By Chapter 2, I was turning off my cell phone, bringing this with me into my kitchen while I cooked, and taking deep breaths because honestly - this man knows how to creep out a reader in the best way possible. Atmospherically stunning and brilliantly revealed, the setting to this novel was claustrophobic and uncomfortable to read. It's not a story about being in your warm, cozy, and familiar house during a storm. It's about being stuck on a highway at a rest stop with strangers and a kidnapped child. As the novel progresses, the intensity was palpitating and I couldn't get over how much I was loving this story. Adams writing is glorious, with amazing characters, razor-sharp dialogue, and the twists and turns were relentless. 

I loved the revelations in this story. Between the bigger revelations and the twists that were sprinkled throughout, I was relishing in the fact that Adam spread these out evenly and kept the pacing at a panicking rate. It was really refreshing to see a thriller that did save all of the twists for the end of the novel. With an ending that was terrifying and unexpected, I absolutely was amazed with this novel.

Rating: 5/5