Bookish suspense...

 "For us, there was no such thing as fate. Fate was a word you used when you had not prepared, when you were slack, when you stopped paying attention. Fate was a weak man's crutch."

Sarah and Jennifer created the Never List to protect themselves from any and every accident or mishap, sure that if they adhered to the rules of their list they would be safe. And for years it worked. Until they went away to college. Then one night, coming home from a party, they're taken by a man named Jack Derber, who locks them away in his cellar and holds them captive with two other girls for the next three years. Sarah survives, but she's not the same girl she once was. As for Jennifer? Sarah doesn't know what happened to her.

"We'd been naive. We hadn't believed other minds could be as calculating as ours. We hadn't counted on actual evil as our enemy rather than blind statistical possibility."

Thirteen years later, Jack Derber is up for parole. He's been taunting Sarah from prison with strange letters and clues. And Sarah knows she's going to have to face up to the nightmares of her past so she can finally find out what happened to her friend all those years ago.

I could not put this suspenseful mystery down! I'd tell myself I was only going to read one more chapter, but one chapter would turn into two, then three, then four... Sarah's story is so compelling, and Zan's writing so amazing, I was completely drawn in. Sarah's search for the truth takes her back into the darkness of her past. (And it is a very dark place.) And the other girls who survived seem to have good reasons to hate her. This is an intense thriller, but not an overly graphic or explicit one, for which I was grateful. And that twist at the end! It's a good one. I'd give this book 4/5 stars. 

Happy Reading!