The Trap by Melanie Raabe

Gut Instinct Rating - 3

Characters - 4

Believability for type and topics - 3

Similarity to other books - 5

Writing Style - 3.5

Excitement Factor - 4.5

Story Line - 5

Title Relevance - 4

Dust Jacket Art - 4

To read or not to read? If you want a basic crime read, sure.

Movie? None

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.47. I think it was more deserving of a 4.00.

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Published on March 1, 2015

Pages: 352

Publishing Company: Grand Central Publishing

Number of books by author: 5 Novels

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

This was a book that I thought was going to go a different route. The premise of the book is that you have an author who has become agoraphobic since her sister's death. One day while watching the news, she sees her sisters' killer and decides she's going to prove it by inviting him in for an interview. Things get hairy of course, but eventually she makes the decision to move forward with her life.

I'm not sure why I didn't care for this book more than I did... My initial rating was 4 stars (gut instinct), but as the book sat on me for a few days, I realized I didn't think that highly of it, so I moved it down to a 3. I just felt like more was missing from the story than I would've liked. The characters were fine, but the reality of the characters was less and less likely as the story went on.

The believability really got me on this one. You have a person who refuses to leave the house, has all of her day to day items brought in by mail or via a service, and you have a few people who come into the home for company and outdoors tasks (watering the garden). But, not once is this labeled as an agoraphobic person. I think the story really needed this aspect to feel whole. It's mentioned numerous times, and not only that - it's a huge piece of the puzzle towards the end of the book that just falls off.

The book was unique - I've never read another story line with this premise. But the writing style was another faltering point. You have the story itself, which is kind of jumpy in general. There's not a lot of flow between each chapter, or even within some of the chapters. But then you have the character in a book, who is an author, writing a book as well. Unfortunately, that book was included within the story and it was repetitive and out of place.