3.5⭐ rounded up for a solid part 1.

Featuring ~ single 1st person POV, present and past timeline, death of parent, kidnapping, suspense, psychological thriller, 2 part story ~ The Kidnap & The Reckoning

16 year old Amelie is on her own after her father's death. She leaves the country and meets Carolyn. Carolyn offers her a live in job and they become fast friends. Some years later she begins working for Ned and they head to Vegas together for a work trip. Just a few days later Amelie and Ned are married and Amelie soon realizes she's made a big mistake and the deal they made could cost her everything.

When I read books like this I wonder how I would handle being held prisoner ~ would I fight, follow orders, reverse psychology or develop Stockholm syndrome ~ lets hope I never have to find out. I feel like Amelie did all the right things. The present and past timeline in part 1 was more exciting than part 2. I can't really say I was in love with the ending.

Side note ~ The main characters name is Ned, but the blurb says Jed ~ am I crazy?

I was fortunate enough to receive a kindle copy and the audiobook to review. I started out reading it, then switched to audio and finished it up that way. Either way was fine.
Narrated by Georgia Maguire for 8 hours and 41 minutes, easy to follow at 2x. She did a fine job, her males voices were okay.

This was a bit better than previous books I've read by this author, but I'm not really sure she's for me. The Prisoner, while exciting at first, was really predictable and didn't really offer me anything unique or surprising.

The novel is a fast paced story, divided between the past of Amelie being orphaned as a teen and making her way to London where she eventually marries Ned, and the present day where she and Ned have been kidnapped and are being held prisoner by unknown people.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a great job at keeping the tension going when it started to get tedious. At about 75% in I had a general idea of what was going on and I ended up being correct. Sometimes this doesn't take away from the story, but in this case it did. Especially since we get an info dump at the end where it is all explained to the reader, even though we should all be bright enough to put it together without the wrap up. (Side note, this is the second book in recent days that has done this and it's frustrating.)

Overall it's not a terrible book though. The storyline is entertaining and kept my interest throughout. Fans of this author's other books should really enjoy this latest offering.

Let me start by saying that B.A. Paris is one of my favorite authors, which I think makes me a harsher critic. I enjoyed this twisty thriller, but I am not saying you have to purchase and read it right away...

Here are the things I loved:
1. It starts out fast-paced and sucks you in.
2. It jumps back and forth between present and past.
3. The narrator did a great job.

The end just left me underwhelmed...

If you've enjoyed B.A. Paris' other books, this is another to add to your list. It's a twisty story that makes you question what you think you know until the end. It's not nearly as graphic or dark as Behind Closed Doors but still as complicated and well thought out. It gets a little convoluted at the end, but not enough to ruin the experience of the fast paced plot. If you need a quick thriller this spooky season, this is a perfect fit.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the advanced audio-copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is my first book by BA Paris and it was great! There was a lot of plot, to the point where I felt like it could have been separated into 2 stories, but was written well so it was overall a good read. I really liked that the plot was unique and fast paced.

I didn't enjoy some aspects of the plot though. I felt like the characters were hard for me to like. Amelia had so much depth and story while I felt everyone else needed more development. The story overall was a little too dark for my liking, but this is just personal preference/error on my part for requesting this arc without knowing that much about it.

I would definitely recommend this book to all of my thriller lovers and/or fans of the authors previous works! It was a great story overall.

4/5 stars. I haven’t met a B.A. Paris book I haven’t liked yet! This book is about Amelia, who has no family and marries a billionaire. She awakes one morning held hostage, but who did this and why?

“𝑼𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒍 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒔, 𝑰’𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆, 𝑰’𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒔 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂 𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒔 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆.”

B.A. Paris is a hit or miss author with me, but I always like giving authors multiple chances, plus her newest release had a premise that caught my attention.

The opening chapter of a kidnapping in progress caught my interest right away and I was super excited to see where the story was going to go. Paris has a way of creating stories that are page turners; with short chapters and a past (pre kidnapping) and present (kidnapped) timeline, it was easy to get sucked into the story… until it wasn’t. I got to a point where I wanted answers quicker as to why this kidnapping happened; the past narration felt slow moving (and yet unbelievably quick - Amelie and Ned aren’t married very long). I listened to part of this on audiobook and read part; the narration by Georgia Maguire wasn’t for me in the first part; the narration wasn’t expressive enough and made Amelie seem whiny (although I found it much more interesting to listen to in part two). There is also a lack of character development; some of the characters seemed out of a cartoon. I predicted a few of the twists, but still did want to see how things unfolded (although I struggled at how Amelie didn’t see some of it before), and the ending had a lot of telling, not showing.

The Prisoner is a story of money, coverups, hiding the truth, and justice. Although it wasn’t really for me, there are lots of great reviews for it. I think fans of easy-to-digest popcorn thrillers would especially enjoy it! Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, MacMillan Audio, and NetGalley for the ARCs!

After reading “The Prisoner” I had the great fortune to be provided the audiobook. I really enjoyed listening to this book.

I have reviewed the book and I actually liked the audiobook even better. The narrator is great and the telling of the story kept me interested and coming back for more listening.

B.A. Paris is always masterful at suspense and leaving you wondering what is REALLY going on? This audiobook did not disappoint and has me shopping Audible to have a listen to some of the older books by the author.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher. and the author for the advance listener copy. All the opinions stated are my own.

As Amelie tries to make a life for herself after losing her father and mother passing away when she was young. She is now 17 yrs old all on her own. She finds an amazing set of friends who help her get back on her feet and pursue he dreams of studying law. When she gets swept off her feet by the glamorous lifestyle of Jed Hawthorne who made her a deal without knowing what kind of person he really was. That is when this thriller really takes hold of you.
This was a great listen to thoroughly enjoyed the ending really had me on my toes towards the end. I rated this book 5 stars and if you like a good thriller check this one out. Thank you, St. Martin's Press for granting a free copy to listen to.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this early copy of The Prisoner on audiobook. I’m a pretty big fan of B. A. Paris, but this one was a little too predictable and slow for me. The buildup took too long, but the main plot line was decent.

2.5⭐️
Oh my goodness! I’ve been struck dumb. What just happened? I felt like a big piece of this is missing. Anybody??
It had a strong start and it moved along at a good pace. The mystery of the beginning kept me reading and then listening. It was like a boat with strong sails taking me out into the middle of the ocean and then died because the sea at no wind at all. And just when the promise of wind was coming the boat sank. Is there going to be a book 2?
Anyway, I was left to to many questions and am only giving this a 2.5⭐️. I will say that the narrator was excellent but the book was not.
Thanks St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio via NetGalley.

I’m a little wary when it comes to BA Paris titles due to my first experience with her novels. I’m not a fan of animal violence and one of her titles goes in depth on the topic in ways that I was not ok with. But that being said, I did enjoy this novel very much. I think the back and forth timeline was executed very well, as it can be overdone in today’s thrillers. It had me guessing about the outcome up until the end, because even though I figured out the “bad guy”, for lack of a better term, at an early stage, she kept us wondering the “how” of the matter. All in all this is a good quick read that I’d recommend to physiological thriller lovers like myself.

SYNOPSIS: Amelie is swept into a glamorous lifestyle where she marries the handsome billionaire Jed Hawthorne. Then, all of a sudden, she wakes up in a pitch-black room, not knowing where she is or who has taken her.

🏚REVIEW: It’ll be hard for me to review this book without spoilers, but I’ll do my best. First I’ll say, the title doesn’t even make sense for the entirety of the book. I felt like I was reading two totally different novels from the first half to the second half; and I don’t mean that in a good way.

I’ll keep it short and sweet: I hated this one. Paris’s Behind Closed Doors was one of my all time favorite thrillers, but since then, this author has failed to find the magic in any thriller since. I was bored, confused, and completely uninterested. This book was just….odd.

I was not a fan.

🏚VERDICT: 1 STAR ⭐️

It comes out November 1st if you’re interested, and I do want to thank @netgalley @stmartinspress and @macmillan.audio for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

This book was not bad but it was not great. I was hooked in the beginning and interested to hear the story but it kept just dragging. I found myself getting distracted easily while listening to this because I just wasn’t feeling it. I have thoroughly enjoyed BA Paris work in the past and I was very excited to have the audiobook arc of this. I was just forcing myself to finish it and ultimately could not get invested into the characters like I have previously in the their other work.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review!

B.A. Paris looks as....I don't even know what to put here, this book was just a train wreck
Normally I would write what I think the synopsis of the book should be as sometimes what is on the book is misleading, but I just can't with this book as I'm not 100% sure what is going on other than a woman is kidnapped and all this stuff before happened that we don't get much about.

I have been wanting Paris to capture what she had in her debut novel Behind Closed Doors and I am sad to say that Paris was not able to succeed in this book. If this book would have been longer, I would not have finished it and unless by making it longer it became a more complete novel.

This did not feel like a full novel as it jumps around A LOT and we get random bits of information here and there and you wonder how we get there. In one of the past she is an orphan living on the streets and follows a lady home from having a coffee and the next chapter they are older and friends, like wtf.

It feels like Paris had all of these ideas but no idea how to connect them together, I felt like I was reading a first draft of this book and she was struggling to write a full novel. I mean the guts of the book is there, but there was random shifts of information, that would come out of left field that I did not see them as twists but just slaps in the face of this new info and why didn't we get this information earlier or lead up to in the past parts. I kept thinking that I have missed something and had to back track to make sure I had not. What do mean this person is dead? When did they die? When did this go down? I don't think I have said WTF in regards to a book in a long time.

Don't get me started on the ending, just when we are supposed to get what happened and why it happened in more depth readers do get to be part of the conversation.

Sorry Paris but I am done with reading your books. It pains me to say that as I have always been excited to read them and hope you could regain your magic but you have not been able to. I have read all of the books you have released (except the Therapist) and they have just not hit the mark each time (though I did think that The Breakdown was okay). On to the next book and author, I'll keep recommending Behind Closed Doors but that is it.

Cheers!!!

Most of the time, I'm very happy to be a Netgalley reviewer. But sometimes I find myself listening to something that feels silly and frivolous and yet I feel compelled to finish it because I've promised Netgalley I would review it. This was one of those times.

This is a story of a young, innocent girl who agrees to marry her wealthy boss in exchange for $100,000 for college. He says he wants to thwart his father's efforts to marry him off to someone else, but she soon finds he has other, darker motives, and before she knows it, she is trapped and cut off from communicating with any of her friends or co-workers. Then she and her husband are kidnapped, and he makes clear how little he cares for her by begging the kidnappers to kill her. And the thrills and surprises continue from there.

It's a somewhat compelling story, made more so by the excellent English narration by Georgia Maguire, and I appreciate Netgalley and Macmillan giving me a free advance copy version of this audiobook, as I know B.A. Paris is a popular author. But unfortunatley the story just fell flat for me.

What It's About: A marriage of convenience between billionaire Jed Hawthorne and Amelie, a woman who is trying to build a life for herself, turns into a nightmare when they are both kidnapped and held captive for days.

My thoughts: This was a my first book by this author and I am feeling ambivalent about it. The story is narrated through past and present timelines where we learn about Amelie's past, and how she ended up marrying Jed and held captive in the present. There was a lot of suspense as we slowly find out more about the kidnap and kidnappers. This kept me invested in the story.

Unfortunately, I was lost in the second part of the story. It was over plotted and just too far fetched for me. Moreover, I couldn't connect with any of the characters at all. I may be the outlier here, so please do not let my personal thoughts deter you from picking up this book!



Pub. Date: Nov 1st, 2022


***Thank you Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this gifted listening copy. All opinions expressed are my own.***

B.A. Paris is another I watch for, and The Prisoner did not disappoint. It has been a while since I felt truly scared reading a thriller, but Paris' description of where Amelie is being held did just that. The reader will need to suspend disbelief just a bit in the end, but still a solid read.

This was a fast-paced novel with lots of twist and turns which made for an enjoyable read. The dove-tailing of the past and the present over the course of the novel was excellent. However, too many of the characters lacked depth and the ending was a little too convenient for my taste. The narrator of the audio version was fantastic and really helped keep me engaged in the story.

B.A. Paris has done it again! Amelie is 17 years old when she is left an orphan and decides to move to London where she hopes to make enough money to one day go to college.

Amelie lucks out in London and meets a woman who offers her a job and a place to stay and then she offers friendship. She has a pretty good life although she hasn't been able to save money for school. In steps her new boss Ned, a billionaire who invites Amelie to fly on a private jet to Las Vegas, for work of course.
Ned is a complete gentleman up until he suggests they get married as a business arrangement. He tells her he's trying to get out of a relationship that his father is pushing on him. And, after one month of marriage, they can say they made a mistake and he'll give her $100,000.

Only Amelie doesn't have her cell phone (left on plane), her laptop (it appears to have dropped and doesn't work), or access to a house phone. She's feeling like a prisoner in her new home even before she and Ned are kidnapped and she is held in a blackened room. Amelie tries to break out and does some calculating on the bathroom walls. In the meantime, Ned acts like a whiny little boy.

There is a little more death than I was comfortable with. But no spoilers, won't tell you who dies. The narration was really good and made for an enjoyable listen, Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.