The Getaway

by 

Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkenen

Overwhelmed with the stress of her job, campaign manager Chloe decides to take a long weekend at a yoga getaway, which promises to be a "transformative" experience. Unfortunately, it isn't the sort of transformation Chloe's looking for.

~~ SPOILERS ~~

This book was included with my audible membership and it's only about 2 hours long, so I decided to give it a listen. I don't know if it was an issue with the actress or with the editing department, but the first 20-odd minutes sound very strange and stilted, like they did several different takes of every line and had to chop-shop a bunch of them together last minute. It's almost like being read to by Alexa. The narration does get better over the course of the story, but it never gets to the point where it's VERY strong.

Sometimes a really fantastic narrator can elevate a somewhat mediocre story. Since this book doesn't have that, we're left with just the story, which is serviceable enough. There's a woman, she thinks she's going for a nice weekend at a yoga getaway, the situation seems sketchy as Hell, but she rationalizes it away, and then it turns out that she should have trusted her instincts.

Trusting your instincts is a big theme in this story. And it's written pretty well, with all the loose ends introduced in chapter 1 neatly tied by chapter 6. The characters are pretty shallow and uncomplicated, but they do their jobs alright and their behavior and motivations are easy to understand.

I found this reminiscent of a domestic abuse Hallmark movie. There's nothing particularly special about it, but it handles its tension and suspense in such a way that you feel compelled to see where it goes, even when you can already sort of guess.

With that being said, I found the ending quite a letdown. Rational, logical, and believable, but somehow disappointing nonetheless.

I'd recommend this to fans of captive horror and suspense stories.