~ Bite 10 ~

Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Plot:

Ordinary mother Rachel Kleins 13 year old daughter has just been kidnapped and in order to negotiate her release she must first, pay a large ransom to an unknown account and second, kidnap another child—welcome to The Chain. 

Thoughts:

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It had an interesting and detailed premise with complex characters, all with their own flaws and you never wanted to put the book down—McKinty’s writing style really made it feel like the stakes were so high that you couldn’t stop reading until Rachel got her daughter back.

In the beginning you learn Rachel has an upcoming appointment to see if her cancer has come back, but heck with worrying about that she has to figure out how she is supposed to obtain enough money to pay the ransom amount she was given and figure out who’s child she’s going to kidnap. 

Rachel has been told not to tell anyone about the anonymous phone call demands or else her daughter will be harmed by the people who kidnapped her, but in needing to tell someone she secretly enlists ex-marine Pete, her husband Marty’s brother to help her kidnap another child in order to get her daughter back. Pete ended up becoming my favorite character in the novel because he had the best development in terms of dealing with a drug addiction throughout the story and slowly we see him reveal his hidden feeling for Rachel. 

As the plot unfolds, we have chapters written from the perspective of Rachels daughter, detailing the basement she is being held in, as well as attempting to plot out her escape. Her character is brave, resilient, and felt like a realistic depiction of a kidnapped child. Rachel and Pete find a child to kidnap and things mostly go smoothly and then the book ends with its huge reveal—telling us how The Chain really started. 

Although I enjoyed the connections and plot twists we got at the end of the book, my only problem with the book was the last few pages because I felt the overall ending was unsatisfactory. Spoiler alert—a flash forward reveals Rachel is pregnant with Pete’s baby. Yes this a happy ending considering the book begins with a mom worrying her cancer has come back, but for some reason I just wanted a crazier ending or perhaps the book could have ended with just the big reveal. I’d be curious to hear other perspectives, so if this premise interests you I would say give this thriller a shot.