Title: Seven Days
Author: Alex Lake
Publisher: HarperFiction
[Synopsis]
A race against time to save her child…
In seven days, Maggie’s son, Max, turns three. But she’s not planning a party or buying presents or updating his baby book. She’s dreading it. Because in her world, third birthdays are the days on which the unthinkable happens… she loses her child.
For the last twelve years Maggie has been imprisoned in a basement. Abducted aged fifteen, she gave birth to two sons before Max, and on their third birthdays her captor came and took them from her.
She cannot let it happen again. But she has no idea how to stop it. And the clock is ticking…
[My Review]
I was blown away by how addictive this book was. I couldn’t put down, and found it equally horrifying and emotional. Maggie was taken captive at 15 and kept in a basement for many years – we start the novel 12 years later, as Maggie is still being held by the man who took her, and has a son called Max.
The novel jumps backwards and forwards in time; we go right back to the day Maggie disappeared, and see the effect this has on her family, and then we see the effect capitvity has on Maggie as the years go by, and also on her parents and brother too. It’s heart-wrenching at times, and often very disturbing too. I think Alex Lake has portrayed the events in this book as realistic and convincing; it doesn’t feel over dramatised but the author has given the serious issues in Seven Days the attention and gravity it deserves.
I spent a lot of the book feeling very tense, but in an I-need-to-know-NOW-what-will-happen way, and Alex does a great job of making you really care for (some of) the characters. ‘The man’ who took Maggie is so utterly repulsive that I felt myself desperate to see him get his comeuppance, but also very concerned that the novel would end in a different way to what I’d imagined. I’m not going to give anything else away about this book, but I’d really recommend it to anyone looking for a gripping, tense thriller.
[Rating: 5/5]
Many thanks to the publisher, HarperFiction, for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.
Really loved this one!