Review: Hostage Three by Nick Lake

Title: Hostage Three

Author: Nick Lake

Publisher:  Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Publishing Date: November 12th 2013

Pages: 384
Genre:  YA Coming of Age Thriller

Series: Stand Alone
Source: ARC

  

The last thing Amy planned to do this summer was sail around the world trapped on a yacht with her father and her stepmother. Really, all she wanted was to fast-forward to October when she’ll turn
eighteen and take control of her own life.

Aboard the Daisy May, Amy spends time sunbathing, dolphin watching and forgetting the past as everything floats by . . . until one day in the Gulf of Aden another boat appears. A boat with guns and pirates – the kind that kill.

Immediately, the pirates seize the boat and its human cargo. Hostage One is Amy’s father – the most valuable. Hostage Two: her stepmother. And Hostage Three is Amy, who can’t believe what’s happening. As the ransom brokering plays out, Amy finds herself becoming less afraid, and even
stranger still, drawn to one of her captors, a teenage boy who wants desperately to be more than who he has become. Suddenly it becomes brutally clear that the price of life and its value are two very different things . . .

I came across this book on Netgalley and thought it sounded very interesting. I was very excited to get a good thriller in. The book started out with a bang and hooked me from the very first page. Unfortunately it lots some of its oomph for me about halfway through the book but picked up bit again in the end. It was a great story with some ups and downs but worth the read.

Amy is a bit of a witch with a cold heart and no direction. It all started after her mother died. As her father's last ditch effort to get through her closed off heart, he takes her and his wife out on a yacht and set sail for a pretty long trip. Everything is pretty kosher, nothing big happening, seems pretty easy and boring day after day, until pirates take the ships crew and her family as hostages. Amy and her family are worth a lot of money and the pirates intend to collect one way or another. After quite a long time on ship with the captors Amy starts to befriend one and even starts to fall for one, she also learns there is so much more going on that she was never aware of in other countries and her own home. 

The book started out with a bang, intense and intriguing. It grabbed me and took a while to let me go. I loved the start of the story. The story starts out at the end and shows just a glimpse of what is going on. Then Amy goes back to the beginning and tells the story until its all caught up. I was hooked for sure. The first half of the book went by quickly and I couldn't put it down. Some where along the middle the story lost a little bit of its gumption and I struggled for a while. The story did eventually pick up for me and the ending was pretty epic. 

The story was so much more than a thriller. At times it was very thrilling but at other times the story focused on Amy and her issues. There was lots of time spent in Amy's head and I learned quite a bit about her and her past. The author did a great job keeping the tones very different when going between the present when on the ship and the flashbacks of Amy's past. It was pretty much like reading two different stories. There was ever more. The book also dealt with the pirates. At least one of them. Why they do what they do, the need for it, the way the lived, and the dangers in their lives. It was very enlightening. It was a good mixture of 3 different stories happening at one time. 

Amy was one of those characters. I didn't care for her at all in the beginning. She was self centered, brooding, and just annoying. As time went on she began to change and I could see her coming into the person she needs to be. She had many and much needed"aha" moments realizing there is so much more going on than the demons inside her own mind. Even though I didn't care for her much at the beginning she was still easy to connect to and understand. Especially as her past came to light. She had some pretty messed up memories that were skewed to her liking I am sure. She was troubled and in the end she started to come around. She still had a long ways to go but she was headed in the right direction. 

I liked many of the secondary characters. I even liked a few of the pirates. I liked them, hated them, felt for them, and needed to know more about them. At times I could see why Amy would have a bit of a pull to Farouz, one of the younger pirates. I really didn't like the romance though. It was a bit fast and at times felt forced but it still fit well into the story. 

The one secondary character I really enjoyed was Amy's stepmother. Amy pretty much bad mouthed her from the beginning and at first I thought she would turn out to be the monster that Amy painted her to be. Typical stepmother type. Nope so not.. She had more to her than what was easily seen and I liked her. I would have loved to seen more of her in the story. Bottom line the characters made the story, they were real and flawed and I just liked them. 

A very good read. Enjoyable, great ending. a few bumpy parts, but I liked it.