The Prisoner

In a pitch-dark room, kidnapped Amelie Lamont tries to understand why she was taken. Her silent captors offer no clues. After her father passed, she had moved to London to earn money and eventually attend law school. Instead, homeless, she meets Carolyn Blakely and her friends Lina and Justine, who help her turn her life around, but also introduce her to Ned Hawthorpe, son of a billionaire philanthropist. Unexpectedly Amelie and Ned marry for mutually self-serving purposes, but soon Ned’s noxious character emerges. Amelie must use her wits to survive a controlling husband and soon an angst-filled prolonged captivity. Weaving between the recent past and present, the book’s first half is tense and uneasy with a lonely young woman stumbling into a world she can barely conceive of with its wealth but also darkness. The attention-grabbing beginning unfortunately deflates with a long set of revelations as to why she was kidnapped.