Rating: 
Summary: Such potential!
Review: I agree with the reader from Seattle. This book had such potential. After the first few pages, I was unable to put it down. I couldn't wait to get to the ending - to bring the whole story together, but it just didn't happen. All through the book I was formulating endings...she's a twin, she's really Jo, it was all a dream...and then the end comes. What a disappointment! I was really hoping for a more clever ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful thriller -- another winner from Nicci French!
Review: I couldn't wait to pick up Nicci French's new thriller -- and I wasn't let down. Land of the Living is French's best work since Beneath the Skin. In Land of the Living, French introduces the reader to Abbie Devereaux -- a young woman held captive. Bound from top to bottom in the dark, she is only able to hear her kidnapper's sinister voice. To make matters worse, she has no recollection of the time in which she had been accosted. She is able to escape from her attacker's grasp, but her nightmare has just begun...
Will she be able to adjust to life after the aforementioned experience? Will be able to get her memory back? Will she be able to find her attacker? There are various twists in this powerful thriller. The climax is flooring. Nicci French's descriptions of the terror the protagonist goes through are precise. I was able to feel the heroine's fear and hopelessness. I couldn't put this book down and was savoring the pages like an exquisite bottle of wine. Are you in the bargain for a gripping, intelligent thriller? I recommend this fine novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of intrigue, twists and turns
Review: I originally got this book for someone else but decided to read it for myself after they couldn't stop saying how much they had enjoyed it. This book starts with an amazing bang that catches you from the start as you join a 25 year old woman who is bound in the dark with no memory of who she is or how she got there. As the short punchy paragraphs progress you remmeber with ehr as she pulls her name from her memory and figures out some of her surroundings and learns that the man who is keeping her in the dark will kill her - like the other girls he names as having killed. The ending is just as powerful as the beginning as the book gallops to a conclusion. This book was enjoyable and I basically read it in one sitting, but I felt that in the middle the book wandered a little and didn't do justie to the amazing beginning/ending. You are really drawn into the world of Abbie (the main character) and you feel what she feels as she tries to desperately pull together the fragments of her life in the past few weeks without the help of the police and other professionals who don't believe her. I would recommend this book to other readers who like to solve a mystery through the pages of the book, but I felt that this book would have had a greater impact if it had been shortly and the middle had been more tightly written. This is a tense and suspence filled novel that will keep you guessing right until the end. I am always guessing how TV shows like this and books like this are going to end - but for a change I was caught by surprise when the book ended. This would get a five star rating from me if it had been a bit shorter and more focused - but I am a fussy reader so enjoy the book and make up your own mind. If you like this book you may want to try The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen.
Rating:
Summary: cold revenge
Review: I was riveted to this horrifying story of a young woman's abduction & incarceration by a man she never sees. When she finally escapes back to her life, she not only can't quite remember what she was doing before she was snatched, she is told, in no uncertain terms that not only can no one help her, no one really believes her. Abbie is not your usual damsel in distress, she's got ice in her veins & revenge on her mind. Nicci French has once again delivered a spine-tingling, hair-raising journey into the dark side of humanity. Scary, immediate & ultimately satisfying!
Rating:
Summary: If you like her other books, you'll like this one
Review: If you have read any of Nicci's other books, you'll like this one. Most of her protaganists are similar, if not in looks, then in attitude. Abbie is very similar to Nadia in Beneath the Skin, Kit in The Red Room, and definitely Alice (?) in Killing Me Softly. I liked those books (and their main characters) so this book was a little familiar to me. The book flowed nicely and was very realistic. I could picture myself in Abbie's shoes, except maybe for the romance part, that was a little unbelievable. (Who would sleep with someone that might have had something to do with their abduction and torture?) All and all though I was not disappointed because I really knew what to expect from Nicci's previous books. If you think about it, in most thriller/mystery stories authors will change the plot and sort of change the protaganist, but there are always similarities so you know what will happen, in a way. This isn't an epic saga, just a thriller. And I thought it was very thrilling!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulously Chilling Thriller
Review: In Nicci French's latest thriller, "Land of the Living," Abigail Devereaux finds herself waking up in complete darkness. Cold, wet and in a lot of pain, she can't figure out if she's dead, and if this is just what death is like, or if she's been in some sort of accident. Soon she figures out she's been abducted and she begins trying to figure out how long she's been held prisoner. French has created a chilling worst case scenario tale with fabulous descriptions that will have readers gripping their seats and biting their nails. The emotions and thoughts that are depicted through Abigail are very well-written and realistic. The more Abigail tries to get her abductor to talk to her and to try to get an explanation of why, where and when from him, the more dead end answers she's given. His deep, hoarse laugh echoes in her ears when he leaves her every few hours. She's been blindfolded the entire time, unable to see what type of prison she's in. When he leaves her, she is hog tied with a noose around her neck with the other end attached up high on a wall. Knowing that time is running out and that the next time he comes to her could be the final time before he slaughters her, she decides to hang herself. Abigail finds herself on the ground with a pain in her neck, literally. The noose snapped and she was cut loose when she hears her abductor coming for her. She barely makes an escape. The police can't seem to find any evidence or leads to catch her abductor and they are not even sure if they believe her story at this point. So now, not only does the police or anyone else not believe her story, but her abductor is still on the loose. And she has no idea who he is, what he looks like or how he found her the first time. Wouldn't a second time be even easier?
Rating:
Summary: Suspense never lets up!
Review: LAND OF THE LIVING grabbed me from the first sentence and wouldn't let go until the last. Right off, we're inside the head of a woman who's been kidnapped. We're with her as she struggles to keep her sanity and as she comes to accept death as inevitable. The simpler her words, the more heartbreaking her ordeal. And the worst is yet to come: No one believes this really happened to Abbie. So, amnesia notwithstanding, she must recreate her 'lost days' as best she can, then retrace her steps back to her kidnapper. Trying to fill in what she did during those forever-gone days was the part I loved best. It was like cell-thin layers of an onion being peeled away, one by one, ever so slowly. Excrutiating and tantalizing! I found the dialogue and characters realistic. No cardboard cut-outs here. These are complex personalities dealing with extreme circumstances. They're smart and edgy, but make mistakes and bad decisions. With one glaring exception, there's no character who isn't both damaged and tough, confused and confident, intelligent and thick. There's a refreshing lack of sentimentality. I think that's what freaked me most about this book -- how very real it all seemed. I know these people; I am these people. Most thrillers slack off around the middle. This one does not. Nor did the ending disappoint. LotL might not be to everyone's taste. Much of it is internal, what goes on in Abbie's mind. It's not action-packed. In no way is that a complaint! But if you like your thrillers riddled with violence and gore, you might be disappointed here. Like the quote from THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY from which (I assume) LotL gets its title, the core of the story is the human condition. You don't have to look into it that deeply to enjoy it, but it's there if you're interested. If Nicci French's other books are half as good as LAND OF THE LIVING, I'll be one happy gal!
Rating:
Summary: an excellent read
Review: Out of all the Nicci French novels that I've read so far, "Land of the Living" is definitely my favourite. Suspenseful and fast paced, I stayed up all night in order to finish it -- it was definitely a book that was hard to put down. I'm not going to summarise the plot too much because the story is a really a rather basic one and also because going into it too much may take away from the overall enjoyment of this really excellent book if you haven't read it yet. The novel opens with our heroine, Abbie Deveraux, coming to consciousness, only to realise that she's being held captive. Quickly she realises that her kidnapper is mad and that he will probably kill her once he's finished with her. But she is determined to survive. And when an opportunity presents itself, Abbie escapes. Her ordeal is now over. Or is it? She's lost her immediate short term memory, and has no idea as to what occurred in the days leading up to her kidnapping. On top of it all, she discovers to her shock and anger, that because that is no physical evidence to support her story, no one -- not the police, her NHS psychiatrist or her friends -- believes her story. Alone, Abbie is determined to piece together the past she has forgotten, and to find out why the kidnapper chose her. She also comes to the realisation that she needs to find the kidnapper before he finds her. Because she knows that he will come after her and that she has only herself to rely on... "Land of a Living" was a really fantastic read. Brilliantly plotted, with some rather surprising plot twists and possessing a really compelling storyline, this really is a book that had me sitting at the edge of my seat -- metaphorically anyway. The 'action' unfolded smoothly and seamlessly and at a rather swift pace. I really cannot praise this book too much, and my recommendation is that if you're a mystery-suspense buff, then you really should read what is probably going to be the best suspenseful novel of the year.
Rating:
Summary: note to anna from cleveland
Review: regarding your inquiry for "the memory game" and "the safe house," both are available used on amazon, or new at amazon.co.uk. I got both years ago from the .uk site, and while they are good books, they do not even come close to "Killing me softly," which is still far and away french's best book.
Rating:
Summary: A Harrowing and Enthralling Thriller
Review: The first 50 pages of Nicci French's LAND OF THE LIVING are amongst the most terrifying, chilling passages I have ever read. Nicci French has written nothing short of a harrowing, enthralling thriller in the best tradition of PRESUMED INNOCENT and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Abbie Devereaux awakes to total darkness. She awakes not knowing who she is, where she is, or how she got there. She awakes to the realization that she is tied, gagged and blindfolded. Her memory is failing her; she is on the verge of knowing what has happened to her, but she can't ... quite ... grasp ... it: "There were other things at the edge, clamoring to be admitted to my brain. Bad things. Restrained. In the dark. Hooded. Ridiculous. Could it be a joke? I remembered stories of students. They get you paralytically drunk, put on a train at Aberdeen. You wake up in London dressed only in your underwear with a fifty-pence piece in your hand. Everyone will jump out in a minute, pull off the blindfold, and shout 'April fool.' We'll all laugh. But was it April? I remembered cold. Had summer been? Was summer still to come? But of course a summer had always been and there was always another summer to come." What has happened to Abbie is no joke. She has been abducted and is being held by a nameless, faceless man intent on killing her --- and she is not his first victim. He regales her with stories of the other women he has kept, kept to the point that they completely lost their senses, and then he killed them. Abbie tries desperately to hold on to her sanity; she won't let him break her. He is patient and is in no rush to do her in. But she is patient, too. And in a moment of heavenly luck, she escapes. Now her real ordeal begins. She must convince the police, her doctors, her family and her friends that she has been kidnapped and held against her will. The moments, days really, leading up to her abduction reveal themselves over time to be radically different from the bits and pieces she remembers. French offers tidbits, morsels, and teases that keep one reading and wondering. Her abusive boyfriend has a new girlfriend. Why is he no longer with Abbie? She flitted from friend to friend, seeking comfort and help. How come no one remembers where she was last? Her job is no longer. What happened to destroy her career? And she has a mysterious new roommate that she never sees. Who is this person, and where is she? As if seeking the answers to all these questions isn't enough, she must solve the crime that has been perpetrated against her, because no one else is willing to help. And her abductor is close on her trail. Need I say more? --- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara
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