The Chain by Adrian McKinty is a book that made me feel on edge the entire time I was reading it. That doesn’t happen very often for me! It’s a book that came out a fair few years ago (it was published in February 2019) and I’ve had it on my tbr pretty much since it came out and I’m so mad that it took me so long to read it because it was such a fascinating book.

Summary: 

Rachel Klein drops off her daughter at the bus stop every morning. But today she gets a call from an unknown number that changes everything. A woman tells her that she has kidnapped her daughter, Kylie. She has her bound and gagged in her back seat and the only way for Rachel to see her daughter again is to follow the instructions exactly: pay a ransom, and find another child to abduct. This kidnapper also has a child that has been taken, and if Rachel doesn’t take another child her son will be killed. 

Thoughts:

Did I actually like this book? I don’t know. Honestly, it wasn’t a fun book to read. I’ve never felt so anxious reading a book. The first half, specifically, genuinely felt so horrible and I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading but I’m also so glad I read the book. It now feels like a very weird book to recommend but I do think it’s a book that I believe other people would like.

It’s definitely one that makes you think. How far would you go to get your kid back? Would you do what these parents did in this book? Would you kidnap another child? 

My one criticism of this book is that towards the end the main villains start to feel very silly and almost cartoonish. At the beginning of the book they feel very serious. I felt like they should be scary. By the time they were fully introduced they just didn’t feel as big and scary as they should’ve been. Parts of the book were told from their perspective and all I could think was that it didn’t feel like these characters could pull off what they were supposed to be pulling off. A big kidnapping ring with multiple moving parts? These people were dumb. 

The first half of the book was definitely more interesting simply because of the mystery. As you learn more about what was actually happening the story definitely became less interesting and less… mysterious. It was still interesting but I feel like the multiple perspectives didn’t work for the book as it went on. I feel like I genuinely don’t know how to talk about this book because it definitely did what it was supposed to do. I felt so horrible and anxious reading the book but surely that’s how I was supposed to feel, right? A child had been kidnapped! It’s about someone having to kidnap another child! It wasn’t a fun read… but it was definitely an interesting one.