Book Review: HOSTAGE by Clare Mackintosh

 

Title: HOSTAGE

Author:  Clare Mackintosh

Read: July 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

 

Book Description:

 

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply.

It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

My musings:

 

Clare Mackintosh is one of my auto-buy authors and I would line up to read one of her shopping lists, so I was doing a little happy dance when I first heard that her new book would be released mid-year. Despite this, the book and I were off to a rocky start. Firstly, I got a “computer says no” message from Netgalley and – oh horror – I had to wait a few agonising months for the publishing date. Then I thought – hey, audio would be great, it would make my commute so much more fun! Only to find that the narrator was about as exciting as listening to a lecture on the life of a garden snail. Heads up, there are about 100 characters in the book and the monotone voice of the narrator made them all blend into bland same-ness, totally confusing me. Not to be easily deterred, I then went out and bought the book to settle in for a great read. And I must say that Mackintosh knows how to start her novels with a bang – quite literally. I was going to be in for a treat!

 

I can see you looking at my three star universe and anticipating the “however”. It’s one of those books that left me feel torn. I wanted to love it, escape into it. And I did love some aspects of the story and the way the author initially built tension and included the POV of several passengers on the doomed plane. As a locked-door, claustrophobic setting the 20-hour non-stop flight was just perfect and held so much potential to be truly terrifying. I also really appreciated getting an insight into the life of an airhostess, especially trying to balance such a demanding job with motherhood and marriage. I found Mina to be an enigmatic and interesting character for most of the book. Mackintosh is a great writer and she knows how to slowly hook her readers and make her characters come to life. So why did I feel underwhelmed?

 

Despite (or maybe because of) the multitude of current affairs issues the author packs into her story, it didn’t quite hit the spot for me. You will hear about the pitfalls of adoption, addiction, marriage problems, parenthood, mummy-guilt, climate change, extremism, childhood trauma, grooming, infertility and probably others I missed. The plot, which in itself could have been thrilling, is practically being drowned in not-so-subtle messages about things we see every day on the news. All that was missing was the pandemic. And to be honest, I would have found it more believable if a bunch of anti-vaxxers had threatened to blow up the plane. Adam’s narrative added very little to the plot for me and fitted too many stereotypes to make him believable. The scenes on the plane were just bit too much over the top dramatic and some of the other passengers’ stories just hung there without context. And the final “killer twist” that hallmarks most of the author’s books was so far-fetched that it merely induced an eye roll from me.

 

Summary:

 

In summary, I felt that the book needed some serious editing. Pick three issues and concentrate on them rather than just about every first-world problem we have right now. That way, Mina’s decision under pressure could have included a bit more soul searching before she went with Option B in the famous trolley dilemma. Adam could have been a normal bloke and father, and it would have made zero difference to the plot and been more believable than the stereotype he had to live up to. I could go on, but that would give spoilers and I would hate to take away any reading pleasure from others who can enjoy the story without analysing it too much.

 

Ah well. *Shrug* Not every book can be winner for everyone and this one just missed the mark for me. But will I line up to read Mackintosh’ next book? Most definitely!