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A review by nickoliver
No Exit by Taylor Adams
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This wasn't quite as good and thrilling as I had hoped it would be, but I think I went into it expecting the plot to be a bit differently? I thought that the mystery around who the kidnapper was would be at the forefront of the story; instead, the protagonist figured that out very early on and spent the rest of the book trying to save the girl and not getting killed by the bad guys. It wasn't necessarily a bad plot, but it was less interesting.
What bothered me about the book, though, was how the prologue pretty much gave everything away. I didn't realise that at first because I didn't pay that much attention to the prologue, but if you did? You could figure out everything about the plot - the one plot twist about the kidnapper, the reason for the kidnapping, absolutely everything - within the first 100 pages.
Moreover, a lot about the plot felt very drawn out. First of all, the main character kept making dumb decisions that just postponed a good ending. She kept fucking up, which was so frustrating after a while that it kind of sucked the whole tension out of the story. Secondly, the climax took so long to happen that it just about drove me up the wall. Like the way Ashley kept getting lucky, even being alluded to not having been shot by Jay? It was probably supposed to be suspenseful, but it just didn't hit the mark for me. It was tense at certain points in the book, but not as much as I would've liked it to be.
And what action we did get was so brutal that after a while, the violence felt gratuitous in a way that almost bordered on torture porn. I don't mind violence, but the one in here just didn't have a purpose most of the time. It was just there to shock the readers.
Plot-wise, the story just didn't have all too much to offer. There wasn't that much that wasn't predictable, and there was a lot that I feel like I had to suspend my disbelief for? For example, at the beginning of the story, it was around 7.30 p.m., and Darby's phone battery had 6% left. And yet somehow, she still had battery left at like, three and four in the morning, despite the fact that she'd constantly tried to send texts and make calls? My phone would be dead after like, fifteen minutes, what kind of magic phone did she have?
When it came to the villains, they were very cartoonish, especially the main one. I did find him interesting, he was twisted and psychopathic, but he kept going off on tangents, like he was some movie villain who had to monologue his entire plan to the heroes. He talked very clichéd. Plus, sometimes he talked about Darby in a way that just made it obvious that the writer was a man, like focusing on her looks and wishing she was his girlfriend instead. Those scenes were unnecessary and just made me roll my eyes. Kind of took the suspense out of the story, too.
Adams also relied a bit too heavily on a "bad people being ugly and good people being pretty" kind of trope. Darby zeroed in on one of the bad guys immediately because he looked like a rat, without even having any evidence yet that he was bad. She solely judged him based on his looks, which pissed me off. She also referred to him as "rat face" for the majority of the story, even after learning his name. Which would be fine if she did that with everyone - like, if that was just something she did -, but she literally only did it with him. Plus, another bad guy was a bad kisser, because a villain being good at that? Impossible. It was a bit cheap, because that's absolutely not how it works in real life.
Then, one of the villains had a disability - foetal alcohol syndrom -, which I really didn't appreciate being villainised. It was shown at times that said character had grown up around violence, depraved men and abuse, so it could be argued that that's why he became the way he was, and that it had nothing to do with his disability. But it still made me feel gross that the only disabled character in this book was a bad guy.
Lastly, there was the little girl, Jay. She also wasn't written that well, because she somehow read way too old for her age? She was supposed to be around six or seven, but she seemed more like an older child. I can't even explain why, but she just didn't act very childlike.
I wasn't a fan of the writing at all. There were some weird similes, and they were often quite morbid. They did seem fitting for a thriller somehow, but they weren't things someone would just randomly come up with. For example, comparing a broken windscreen wiper to a broken wrist, or the sky to a lilac bruise. Adams also repeated himself constantly, kept repeating the same information over and over again, which was annoying.
This book had potential to be exceptional, and while I did enjoy parts of the book, it was overall a bit disappointing.
What bothered me about the book, though, was how the prologue pretty much gave everything away. I didn't realise that at first because I didn't pay that much attention to the prologue, but if you did? You could figure out everything about the plot - the one plot twist about the kidnapper, the reason for the kidnapping, absolutely everything - within the first 100 pages.
Moreover, a lot about the plot felt very drawn out. First of all, the main character kept making dumb decisions that just postponed a good ending. She kept fucking up, which was so frustrating after a while that it kind of sucked the whole tension out of the story. Secondly, the climax took so long to happen that it just about drove me up the wall.
And what action we did get was so brutal that after a while, the violence felt gratuitous in a way that almost bordered on torture porn. I don't mind violence, but the one in here just didn't have a purpose most of the time. It was just there to shock the readers.
Plot-wise, the story just didn't have all too much to offer. There wasn't that much that wasn't predictable, and there was a lot that I feel like I had to suspend my disbelief for? For example, at the beginning of the story, it was around 7.30 p.m., and Darby's phone battery had 6% left. And yet somehow, she still had battery left at like, three and four in the morning, despite the fact that she'd constantly tried to send texts and make calls? My phone would be dead after like, fifteen minutes, what kind of magic phone did she have?
When it came to the villains, they were very cartoonish, especially the main one. I did find him interesting, he was twisted and psychopathic, but he kept going off on tangents, like he was some movie villain who had to monologue his entire plan to the heroes. He talked very clichéd. Plus, sometimes he talked about Darby in a way that just made it obvious that the writer was a man, like focusing on her looks and wishing she was his girlfriend instead. Those scenes were unnecessary and just made me roll my eyes. Kind of took the suspense out of the story, too.
Adams also relied a bit too heavily on a "bad people being ugly and good people being pretty" kind of trope. Darby zeroed in on one of the bad guys immediately because he looked like a rat, without even having any evidence yet that he was bad. She solely judged him based on his looks, which pissed me off. She also referred to him as "rat face" for the majority of the story, even after learning his name. Which would be fine if she did that with everyone - like, if that was just something she did -, but she literally only did it with him. Plus, another bad guy was a bad kisser, because a villain being good at that? Impossible. It was a bit cheap, because that's absolutely not how it works in real life.
Then, one of the villains had a disability - foetal alcohol syndrom -, which I really didn't appreciate being villainised. It was shown at times that said character had grown up around violence, depraved men and abuse, so it could be argued that that's why he became the way he was, and that it had nothing to do with his disability. But it still made me feel gross that the only disabled character in this book was a bad guy.
Lastly, there was the little girl, Jay. She also wasn't written that well, because she somehow read way too old for her age? She was supposed to be around six or seven, but she seemed more like an older child. I can't even explain why, but she just didn't act very childlike.
I wasn't a fan of the writing at all. There were some weird similes, and they were often quite morbid. They did seem fitting for a thriller somehow, but they weren't things someone would just randomly come up with. For example, comparing a broken windscreen wiper to a broken wrist, or the sky to a lilac bruise. Adams also repeated himself constantly, kept repeating the same information over and over again, which was annoying.
This book had potential to be exceptional, and while I did enjoy parts of the book, it was overall a bit disappointing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, and Child abuse
Moderate: Alcoholism, Grief, and Terminal illness
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Sexual violence, Trafficking, and Vomit
another CW: villifying of a disability --> one of the bad guys has fetal alcohol syndrome