100 Pages A Day...Stephanie's Book Reviews

My third book for Halloween Bingo!  The locked room square, well, it takes place within a locked museum, but people are also locked in rooms within the locked museum, double lock-up, totally counts!

Five strangers wake up in an eerie, boarded up museum.   Some are minor celebrities, some normal people.  Josh is an opera star, Ajay is a Bollywood actor, Sophia is a fan of Josh, Demetri is a Bollywood fan and Don, the ex-boyfriend of the common link between the five strangers, an eccentric artist named Blair.  The last thing that all five remember is a run in with a woman named Blair.  Now, apparently drugged and what they assume is a few days later, they have woken up inside her boarded up museum.  As the group tries to figure out exactly what has happened to them and try to figure a way out of the strange museum, tensions rise as some members of the group come to believe that others are responsible for them being trapped.

This was an incredibly unique concept, live people unknowingly trapped as museum exhibits.  The beginning really grasped me; written from Blair’s point of view as she is trying to figure out how to kidnap Sophia, we have insight into the villain and artist who will create the creepy displays.  From there though, we are thrown to the victim’s perspective after they wake up.  This is where I have just as many questions as Sophia, Josh and the others: where are they?  How did they get there?  What did Blair do to them? And why are they locked in?  Things quickly intensify as more people are found locked in the museum.  The points of view switch between the captives.  Sophia seems to be the only one who can keep it together through everything while the men swiftly jump to conclusions, become violent and go stir crazy. Things sort of fell apart for me a little bit near the end as the different parties start working against one another instead of just turning in Blair.  Anyway, I think incorporating Blair’s point of view throughout the novel instead of just beginning and end would have helped to tie things together.  Also, I kept on reading so I could figure out how the heck Blair pulled off keeping people as living statues for 10 years, it is eventually revealed, but I was a little unenthused by her means.  I did, however, love how the group got back at Blair by the end.  Overall, an interesting thriller with a unique concept, and  a lot of character drama.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.