Max Manning – The Victim
Bewertet mit 3 Sternen
When one evening Gem Golding stops at a drugstore to get some pain killers, a man approaches her and tries to hijack her car. He obviously has a knife, but she never wanted to become a victim. So she has to make a choice quickly: either give in, surrender to him and the situation or fight for her life. Depending on how she decides, her life will take different turns. Gem will either be the fighter or the victim.
Max Manning’s thriller is an interesting play with how the options presented to us and the decisions made have a huge impact on what follows. He continues the story by narrating the two outcomes in a paralleled line, showing the result of each of Gem’s choice and the consequences that necessarily come with it: the psychological effect the decision has on her but also on her husband Drew, her relationship with him, but also her career in PR which forces her to work late hours.
Both sides are convincing in their own way and both stories have their appeal. Yet, admittedly, I got frequently confused which annoyed me a lot. It took some time until I had figured out the concept but until that I was wondering if I could really have misunderstood so much. A different font or the like might have helped a lot. There were some interesting twists and turns, also the characters varied a lot depending on the story line which made it quite interesting and kept suspense high.
An utterly singular concept of dealing with a story, however, it did not fully work out for me which is a pity since I really appreciated the story itself and the writer’s style of writing.