Heard of rural noir? I hadn't and that's what drew me into The Captive. Our story takes place in the near future with the idea that some states have succeeded from the Union. What's odd about this setting is that although it's in the future, families have had to revert to a lot of things from the past. People are riding on horses and farming, yet have cell phones and computers. I felt like we were on a modern Oregon Trail quest. It took some adjusting on my end, but I did enjoy the rural, dystopian setting.

My issue with the book was the main character, Brooke. She drove me insane. She's apparently the only one who knows how to protect her family. Although, she wouldn't have to protect her family on her own if she tried a little honesty for a change. The characterization was pretty unbelievable on most accounts.

I did enjoy the plot and storyline. I actually preferred learning about Brooke's past and family history opposed to her current situation. The family drama and drug involvement were intense. This inclusion did help us understand why Brooke was the way she was. It did make her more relatable. There are several twists I didn't find predictable, which I loved.

This is very different than the type of thriller I usually read, but it was great! Super unique alternate reality wherein an economic recession lead to succession/independence of rural areas, so now those regions are basically lawless and disconnected from technological luxuries like gas. Our main character, Brooke, has a troubled past and has to go on a dangerous road trip with her family after a fugitive shows up on her property. This reads like a winter Western, including the violence of other Westerns. It’s a very harrowing read, and great to see our main character’s protective mom genes kick in immediately. I didn’t love the relationship dynamics with Brooke and her husband, but was able to look past it. I think this will be great for fans of Station Eleven and True Grit.

The Journey

Brooke has held a secret from Milo for the last 15 years. At an auction in town a federal marshal speaks to the crowd about a criminal on the run. When Brooke sees the flyer an hears the name she knows she has to do something.

Back at home she hears noise in the shed. It is the criminal Stephen Crawley. She locks him in the shed. He breaks through the walls with a shovel. She manages to capture him.

She tells Milo that they need to take him to the federal Marshals and collect the reward. Brooke, Milo, and their two girls Sal and Holly set off for the marshals station with the captive in tow.

The journey will not be a smooth one. They will travel though forest in the winter. Many things will happen on their way to the marshals station. Brooke's secret will be out and she is not sure that Milo or the girls will ever look at her the same anymore.

The events explode near the ending, and the story takes a strange and violent turn. You will want to read to the end, If you like action packed stories you will love this book. I would recommend it.

Thanks to Fiona King Foster, Ecco Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance copy in return for an honest review.

I received a digital ARC via NetGalley from Ecco, HarperCollins. Brooke lives in a dystopian Canadian wilderness with her husband and two daughters. 15 years ago she escaped a deeply troubled family in a segregationist state. Now her past has come back to confront her in a big way and her family is traversing the snowy wilderness with a known criminal. Secretive Brooke is yet to open up to her family about her past discretions and tensions are rising.
At first I didn’t know how I felt about this book. Brooke was bland and the dystopian world out of my comfort zone – but halfway through the story really started to find its footing and I became invested in her family and the rural drug-ridden world. We catch glimpses of Brooke’s backstory during her travels in the icy wilderness. This felt like the TV series Justified or Sons of Anarchy, but in the deep woods of Canada.

This was a great book that kept me interested from page 1. The characters were believable and interesting. The central character, Brooke Holland is trying to escape a violent past, and as in many cases, her past catches up with her, but now she has a husband and two daughters to protect. The novel is action-packed and contains some surprises for the characters and the reader. The setting seems to be a post apocalyptic era controlled to a certain extent by gangs, some of whom are violent and some of whom are just trying to survive. The author does a good job using the right amount of description to put the reader in the moment. Overall, I would give the book 3 1\2 stars out of 5 for ages 13 and up.

It's a western. It's a domestic thriller. It's a survivalist anti-government conspiracy. It's a whole lot of ideas thrown together to make a great stew of a book. Brooke's family is part of a rural state that secedes from the country. Never does the book name the USA. Their reasonings felt incredibly similar to the State of Jefferson trying to leave California. As Brooke is deeply embedded in her new life, she doesn't want to let her husband know about the family life she left behind, but it won't leave her behind which results in a crazy wilderness adventure with them fighting for their lives while she continues to try and keep her family separated from her dramatic past. While I think I'd have dealt with that last part a bit differently than Brooke, it did make for some interesting tension in the story.

Not quite post apocalyptic, but close. The story of a family that is living a well as they can with the little they are able to scrap together, their lives get turned upside down when the moms past comes to visit. I found it to be an interesting read. It was a good testament to the perseverance of the human race, the ability to move beyond the things that have hold of you and the fact you can’t ever truly escape your past until you make amends.

Brooke lives in a farm with her husband and daughters, in a state that decided to separate from the rest of the country. One day, on a county fair auction, a marshall announces that there's a bounty for those who help them find a fugitive, Stephen Cawley. Just hearing this name triggers in Brooke old memories and fears that she thought were long ago in her past.
She suddenly becomes a vengeful, unrelentless hunter that is willing to risk everything in order to make sure that justice, even if late, is made.

The books is beautifully written. It has been defined as rural noir and I think that is pretty accurate. The abundance of Southern small town misfits and outcasts reminded me of Carson McCullers stories. Fiona King Foster masterfully develops the best of the genre in this novel and her characters are deep and complex. The scenes are described with a cinematographic quality and beauty.

I would highly recommend it.

This story was a hang on to your seat with twist and turns on the journey. This is about Brooke and her husband and two kids taking a captive to the nearest town. They had been living off the land and Brooke kept her distance from everyone. As I was reading I was thinking how cool this young couple was getting back to the basics of a simpler life then realized it is set in the future. I normally do like novels set in the future but the writing was so well done that I did want to find out what Brooke had done. It did keep me interested enough to finish the book but just not my cup of tea.

I appreciate Netgalley for this ARC for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I read this book I’m two days. It really captures my attention and I can’t wait to read more by this author.

This dystopian novel is set in a world where there is a rural area of land that has seceded from the federal government. The people are in this area are cut off from the urban areas and are living on the fringes of modern society. Brooke and Milo live on a farm there with their two young daughters where they grow and harvest cranberries.

Brooke has a secret past that she has never shared with her husband Milo or her children. The family is struggling to make ends meet. When Brooke hears that there is a large reward for a fugitive named Stephen Cawley, she is both frightened for the family’s safety and encouraged that she might be able to collect the reward to shore up their finances. Cawley, however, brings danger to her and her family because of his part in her past life. When Cawley appears at the farm, she subdues him and quickly gathers her family and their supplies to make the dangerous journey to take the captive to the federal marshal.

Unfortunately, she has sold their only horse and they must travel on foot to their destination many miles away at the onset of the winter season. The dangerous journey is filled with several unanticipated and life-threatening events that force the family members to question their resilience and love for one another.

This debut book has a fast paced plot and is packed with numerous nail-biting moments. The narrative alternates going between Brooke’s present life and her early childhood and teenage years. As the details of Brooke’s past are slowly revealed, the reasons for the secrecy about her past soon become evident.

The plot explores themes of family, loyalty, survival, and loss. The book promotes the author’s idea of how people might live in a world that has been separated from the popular society and beliefs. The descriptive writing enhances the plot as it provides a vivid picture of the rural setting where the majority of the action occurs.

The beginning chapters left me with many questions about the exact circumstances and time period for the events in the book. Some details that could help explain the how and why of these people and their lives are eventually released throughout the story. Without a time frame for gauging events, even futuristic ones, I did feel somewhat bereft even at the conclusion of the book. If you disregard this element, the novel offers the reader both a thrilling and captivating tale of a family’s struggle for safety and survival.

This review is written following a reading of the egalley courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.

This story takes place somewhere in the future where a group of families fought to sever their ties from the federal government to establish themselves in a rural area for their independence. It's like a Western with horses and guns with a glimpse of technology with computers and phones at distant places.

The book begins at an auction miles from their home where the husband, Milo, and wife, Brooke, are trying to sell their dry goods to survive. The marshal then announces that there's a fugitive in the area which sets Brooke in motion as she suddenly realizes she must return to their farm a few hours away to make sure her daughters, Holly, 13 years old, and Sal, 8 years old, are okay. Her husband stays at the auction.

She sells her horse and takes off on foot only to find the fugitive, Stephen Cawley, in her shed. This is someone she knows from her secretive, violent past.. When her husband gets home with a heavy load on his back, he sees that his wife has captured Cawley. Brooke then insists that the family must get their backpacks ready to take this fugitive across the way in the bitter cold to another county to get the $5,000 reward they desperately need. But as anyone could guess, this is not an easy task.

What an imagination the author had to write this book. It's one the reader could like - or not. It was easy enough to read but for me, it was a little out there especially when the two daughters, hungry and cold, had been missing in the snow and their parents were sleeping rather than searching for them. What kind of parent does this?

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advance copy.

The Captive
By Fiona King Foster


This is an adventure tale – but also a tale of family and loss and loyalty and misunderstanding. Of taking the wrong path out of fear and lack of knowledge. And most of all it is the story of what people will do out of love.

Brooke is a cranberry farmer living with her husband Milo and her two young daughters, Holly and Sal. Their farm is out on the edge of nowhere, where they are safe, Brooke thinks, from the horrors of her past.

Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, that past, in the form of Stephen Crawley, her family's sworn enemy, turns up and starts a chain of events that threatens everything and everyone that Brooke holds dear. On the run once again, Brooke takes her family through a grueling adventure without explaining to any of them what is going on. This leads to more trouble than she could have expected. Over the course of their trip many things become clear and many misconceptions from the past are straightened out.

This book is worth the read and the author has done a good job tying up all the loose ends so that the story hangs together in the end.

From the first page, The Captive provided me with more questions than answers and it definitely had my full attention. Brooke Holland lives in a place that has no ties to the outside world. Along with her husband and children, they live on a farm, barely making enough to survive. The life they have chosen may be hard, but they welcome the isolation and freedom. When Brooke goes to the nearest town to get supplies, she is suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with a face from her past. A past that she has tried to forget, and one that her family doesn’t know exists.
Stephen Cawley is a wanted criminal and someone Brooke fears. When he shows up on her farm, Brooke knows she has only one choice. It is either him or her family, so she decides to capture him, hand him over to the law, and collect the large reward that is offered, if he is turned in alive. But the marshal isn’t just down the road, and Brooke and her family will have to survive the elements, the threat of Cawley’s family, and each other if they hope to make it back to their farm. Even with these impending threats, Brooke is reluctant to share her past with her family, and they barely recognize the woman she has become.
The setting was vivid and I loved feeling like I was making this journey too. However, I never totally connected with Brooke. She had a whole lot of skeletons in her closet, and I get wanting to lock that particular door. But once her past invaded her present, she still wouldn’t disclose vital information that would have helped her family understand just what the heck was going on. Most of her decisions seemed to cause more harm than good, and I just couldn’t understand why.
Other than the fact that I kept rolling my eyes at Brooke, this was a quick read that immediately threw me into a familiar, yet unknown world. Learning about Brooke’s backstory helped me to relate more with her character, and I was left intrigued by the story, while not so captivated with the characters.3.5 stars.

This book is a different approach to rural politics and relationships. In a successionist state, two families selling illicit drugs are in a war footing.

The book kept jumping from present day to a historic past when the main character (Brooke) was just a child and her dysfunctional family.

Although hard to follow at times, the character development and interrelationships were intriguing.

Let me relax my jaw and unclench my hands as this read made me tense throughout as all good thrillers do. The premise of this one is so interesting and it was one the reasons I could not resist reading it. I needed to resist reading it because my TBR is honestly embarrassingly long, but it just sounded so interesting and it definitely was! Now I have to say that I came away with rather mixed feelings about this one, although my overall impression is positive.

I never summarize books so if you are looking for a summary, I am going to fail you. I will say this is set in a dystopian society where there are "states" that have succeeded and now live by their own laws. In all honesty, spending all of this time with racist, white, violent folks is not exactly fun reading. While none of this is glorified in any way, it was emotionally exhausting. I feel that it is important to give this trigger warning.

In addition to this exhausting setting, our main protagonist makes decision after decision that left me as a reader absolutely frustrated. While the book slowly delves into the background of our main character in a way that makes her frustrating decisions easier to understand as the we delve further into the book, it still dissatisfied me as a reader.

Probably one of the most frustrating plot points involves children who are lost in the woods at one point in this tale. The adults in the novel were just a little too lax about it. It was UNFATHOMABLE to me that characters would have these long-ass conversations or even sleep while children were missing!! How were they not restless and uprooting every single tree to find these kids?!?!?!? Can you tell I hated this?!?!??! Do the exclamation points not prove this?!?!?!

All that aside, in terms of thrills and actually being a really, really interesting story, this one lives up to it. I had, have, a rollercoaster of emotions about it, but by the time I turned the last page I really found that I liked the tale overall. I think readers looking for a dark, gritty thriller will not be unhappy with this one. Just know there might be a few frustrations along the way.

The Captive is a compelling, intriguing thriller. The plot moves along quickly. Rustic noir isn’t a subgenre I’ve come across before, and that mixed with the slightly dystopian setting kept me interested. The writing was solid. Unfortunately, it left me dissatisfied.

Our story takes place in near future in which a rural state has seceded from the Union and cut itself off from the rest of the US. Life here is very rural and agrarian, with a few small towns but no true urban areas. The people who live here have a hard life, but most consider the hardship worth the preported freedom they claim. This could be an idyllic culture if not for the drugs and the infighting said drugs bring with them. It’s essential a technologically deficient microcosm of the world in which we live.

I’m a sucker for well crafted rural settings, and that is to me Foster’s greatest strength in this book. She imbued the story with a very strong sense of place, and that is a large part of why I kept reading even when annoyed by other elements of the book. I could feel the cold and the wet, and I could see how it balanced with the beautiful. I love the dichotomy between danger and beauty that so defines nature in my mind, and that was well presented here.

The plot itself is an interesting one. Brooke, a wife and mother with a lot of skeletons in her closet, finds an enemy from her past hiding on her family’s farm. Terror and greed have her capturing said enemy and taking him to the outside world, where she can claim the bounty federal agents have placed on his head. The bounty is enough to give her and her family a fresh start somewhere new. The problem is, she’s hidden her past so well that her family doesn’t see why they could possibly need a fresh start. Brooke’s husband and children know nothing of her past, and can’t understand the person she has morphed into since discovering their trespasser.

And now we come to my problem with the novel: Brooke. Honestly, I had issues with all of the characters, and found the characterization to be the least believable and most obnoxious element of the story. The entire plot could’ve been resolved in 20 pages had Brooke actually communicated with ANYONE. She guarded her secrets like priceless jewels and then, when that decision endangered everyone and everything she loved, she seemed blindsided by it. What did you expect, Brooke?! TALK TO YOUR HUSBAND, BROOKE. Seriously every single problem in this book could have been solved by open and honest conversation. It drove me insane.

I think The Captive is going to be a popular book, especially for those who like their thrillers with unreliable narrators à la Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The dystopian rural noir setting is an unusual one, and it’s what drew me to the book in the first place and kept me reading. But if failures to communicate serving as the driving force behind a plot make you crazy, maybe skip this one.

Interesting depiction of how quickly civilization might regress under certain circumstances. I didn't really like/feel invested in any of the characters, but it was a quick read.

Different and mesmerizing

This story is going to be hard to describe well. It is hard to determine when exactly, time wise, this takes place. It seems as though it would be set in the past yet there is cell service and internet. The living conditions are so simple and modest.

The characters are well constructed and the story alternates between Brooke’s current journey and her upbringing (and what an upbringing it is - no spoilers). She is clever and resilient but doesn’t trust anyone other than herself which leads to a few problems along the way. There were twists, some quite surprising.

As I read, I kept thinking about the Hatfields and the McCoys. This story has those rural, brutal moments, full of revenge. It seems to end on a more contemplative note. This was excellent, fast paced and completely different from anything I have read. I would highly recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and Ecco for a copy in exchange for a review.

She takes her family from their home with her captive but don't give a reason. Her family don't know understand why they are running but does everything she tells them to do. The story goes back and forth. You finally figure out why she is running. I didn't care for the language and the brutality.