SURVIVAL INSTINCTS

Single mother Anne, a therapist, has always been close to her daughter, Thea. But now, not long after the two moved from a small town to a lovely new house in Burlington, Vermont, the 12-year-old has turned surly and uncommunicative. Anne prescribes herself a weekend getaway with Thea and Rose, a warmhearted bakery owner who is Anne’s mom and Thea’s beloved “Mimi.” But when they go out for a short hike in a remote (read: no cell signal) park on a bitterly cold day, the three are abducted by a stranger, who takes them at gunpoint to an isolated cabin. Thea was badly injured when he attacked them, the temperature is plummeting, their captor’s intentions are mysterious but clearly not kind, and they must rely on each other. Point of view changes with each chapter, moving among Anne, Thea, Rose, and the nameless man. Each character’s past comes into play, notably Anne’s marriage to Thea’s abusive father, although all of them have dark secrets. Some of the backstories contain crucial revelations—Rose is a lot steelier than she looks—but sometimes they go on at such length that the tension of the abduction sags. Thrillers often hinge on coincidence and improbable circumstances, but this one strains credulity with some, such as an unusual medical condition revealed late in the plot. Waite wrote a successful memoir, A Beautiful, Terrible Thing (2017), about her marriage to a con man, and that experience resonates in this novel. But awkward prose and structural weaknesses make it less than compelling.

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