The Escape
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2.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
'I couldn't stop turning the pages' Nikki Smith, author of The Beach Party
From bestselling author Ruth Kelly, The Escape is an electrifying thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Sarah Pearse.
THE PERFECT OFFER
When struggling influencer couple Adele and Jack post a crowdfunding video online, they’re amazed when a mysterious benefactor offers to buy them a crumbling French chateau. It’s the lifeline they need to leave all their troubles behind.
THE PERFECT DREAM
For Adele, it’s a dream come true. She will post videos of the renovation as thousands of online subscribers follow their journey. But the chateau is not all it seems and the local community is far from welcoming.
THE PERFECT NIGHTMARE
Then Adele’s videos suddenly stop. Her sister Erin visits to make sure she’s OK but the couple have vanished. Between the obsession of Adele’s fans and the claustrophobic secrecy of the nearby town, Erin must unravel the shocking truth behind the couple’s disappearance . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Kelly (The Villa) offers a limp thriller about a young woman's attempts to find her missing sister. The action kicks off with influencer Adele Davenport, who's recently decamped to France, shooting an entry for her semi-popular renovation vlog. She concludes the recording by admitting to her viewers that she's afraid "something really bad is about to happen to her." Two weeks later, Adele's older sister, Erin, arrives in France with the news that their mother's cancer is in its final stages. When Erin shows up to the property Adele and her boyfriend, Jack, were renovating, however, they are nowhere to be found. Kelly then flashes back to when Adele posted a plea to her followers: she wanted help purchasing a 17th-century Burgundy chateau she found online, worth over one million euros, so she could renovate it, document the renovation, and boost her falling engagement numbers. Her GoFundMe campaign to raise the money yielded mostly hostility until a lawyer reached out to say that her "wealthy philanthropist" client would gift the property to Adele and Jack under some strict conditions, including an NDA and a no-guest policy. They accept the offer, and Kelly alternates the details of their increasingly fraught renovation—which faces challenges from neighbors in addition to standard-issue home renovation problems—with Erin's efforts to determine what happened to her sister. Kelly fails to give her characters much dimension, and wrings only minimal suspense out of her intriguing premise. This disappoints.
