No Exit: A Thriller

 “The difference between a hero and a victim? Timing.” 

Author: Taylor Adams

Title: No Exit

Genre: Thriller

Publication Date: January 15, 2019 

Number of Pages: 352

Geographical Setting: Colorado

Time Period: Present Day

Plot Summary: 

College student Darby Thorne has never done anything remotely captivating with her life. She has been coasting through school, and phoning in everything else in life. During a college break, Darby begins the journey home to Utah to see her dying mother one last time. However, when the weather rapidly deteriorates and a blizzard blows in, Darby finds herself stranded at a remote highway rest stop in the mountains of Colorado. 

The rest stop offers little more than a coffee maker and some vending machines as Darby settles in for the night with four complete strangers also stranded by the blizzard. Darby however, is determined to get out. While searching for a cell signal in the parking lot, she makes a shocking discovery - one of the vehicles in the parking lot holds a terrible secret. In a van, parked directly next to her own car, there is a little girl locked in an animal crate. 

As the weather continues to deteriorate, it’s clear that there is no way out and no chance of getting help. With the little girl’s life on the line, Darby makes the decision to break her free from her cage and rescue her. However, it soon becomes clear that everyone in the rest stop has a secret and there may be nowhere for her to turn. 

Subject Headings: 

• Kidnapping - Fiction

• Fiction - Thrillers - Psychological

• Blizzards - Fiction

Thriller Appeals:

• Tone: The tone of this book is very suspenseful. Right off the bat, Darby is put into a situation where she is trapped by the elements around her. As the plot begins to thicken, the reader is thrown curveball after curveball, between finding the girl, discovering whose van it is, and the discovery of the kidnappers and their intensions. The readers are thrown all over the place, but in very intentional and thought-provoking ways. 

• Story Line: The storyline depends heavily on Darby’s observations and interactions with the other characters as the narration follows her throughout the book. However, unlike a suspense novel, it relies a lot less on description of the surroundings, because those do not change drastically, and in order to have those edge-of-your-seat thrills, Darby and the readers have to be thrown off every once in a while, so it doesn’t rely as heavily on Darby noticing every little detail to build the world. 

 

• Characterization: The narration follows Darby through the story and her interactions with the other characters. Since she is trapped with them, her interactions are that much more important, because her movements and actions affect the reactions of her fellow stranded travelers. The fact that she has never done anything remotely remarkable with her life makes her seem less likely to actually take action and do something about the kidnapping, which is kind of brilliant. Setting up the main character in this way sets the perpetrators up for failure, because they count her out as a possible problem. 

• Language/Style: There is a little interaction between Darby and the rest of the travelers, but a lot of her dialogue is internalized. The writing style itself is compelling. Adams does an excellent job of creating characters that readers care about and situations that they are facing. 

• Frame/Setting: Adams created a situation that made it easy to trap the characters. Stephen King has used the same setting more than once in his stories and it works beautifully. It is such a simple thing, but creates complicated and compelling plot points. There are so many problems the characters can face simply due to the weather.  

Three Terms that Best Describe this Book: Intricate, Intense, Compelling

Fiction Read-Alikes: 

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

The Other People by CJ Tudor

Relevant Non-Fiction Read-Alikes:

The Kidnap Years: The Astonishing True Story of the Forgotten Kidnapping Epidemic that Shook Depression-Era America by David Stout

Held Hostage: The True Story of a Mother and Daughter’s Kidnapping by Michelle Renee

Stolen in the Night: the True Story of a Family’s Murder, a Kidnapping and the Child Who Survived by Gary C. King