Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Claudine Dumont’s Captive highlights the thoughts of a woman who’s kidnapped, imprisoned, sedated, & whose body is manipulated against her will at night, including being groomed & having an IUD involuntarily inserted.

So needless to say, this is not a light book. It’s tense, often disturbing, with a provocative ending. It’s also lightened somewhat(ish) by a love story embedded within it, as a man named named Julian is eventually placed within the same room as Emma, the lead.

While I enjoyed the love story I found the overall story to be too disturbing for my taste, especially since the burden of the physical trauma seems to fall on Emma—rather than on Julian as well—& the moments after her IUD has been inserted without her consent are particularly unsettling. The ending also feels somewhat strange to me & not entirely convincing.

Captive’s a fast read that certainly took me on a ride but/& it’s too disturbing to be an entirely enjoyable read & it’s disturbing in ways that don’t always feel productive for the overall impact of the story itself.

3 ⭐️

They come for her in the middle of the night. When she is next aware, she is locked in a grey room. There are no windows and the door is locked. The room is bare except for a mattress.

She spends her time at first thinking about her life. She's lost contact with her family, she has no friends. Her job is nothing to brag about. Every night when she's at home, tequila is her sleeping medication.

*Her mysterious captors subject her to various tests that push her to her limit and make her question everything about herself, including her will to survive.*

I really wanted to like this story. It's short .. a little over 200 pages .. so a fast read. I could not connect with the characters and the story was not suspenseful at all. I had correctly guessed at how things would go about half way through. The ending was abrupt. I did notice a translator is listed .. maybe something was lost in the translation. All in all, not a good reading experience for me.

Many thanks to the author / House of Anansi - Arachnide Editions / Netgalley for the digital copy. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Emma lives a solitary, unremarkable life, self medicating with alcohol to help her sleep…and forget. Then, one day she awakens from a drunken stupor to find herself alone in what appears to be a cell, or basement with only a mattress and a lamp. She has no idea how she got there or who could be behind this sick prank. It must be a prank, but as hours become days, Emma realizes this is no joke and she won’t be going home any time soon. She finds little ways to cope with her situation, things to keep ehr from going mad. But her captors are not done with her yet and Emma finds herself slowly tortured in small increments, in little ways that promise to separate her from her sanity for good. There is a seriously claustrophobic vibe to this book, which elevates the creepy level a little too high for comfort at times