The Captives audiobook

Here is yet another book where the cover is too YA for the content. Anyway, we know from the onset that a crime has been committed because high school ‘it’ girl is, many years later, in prison. While incarcerated she comes under the care of a former classmate who is now a psychologist. This guy was (and still is) obsessed with her. It is clear that both characters exist in captivity. One in obvious ways and the other in ways that are less apparent. What follows is a spellbinding psychological tale of deceit and control. Immergut takes this well worn trope, shakes it up and gives us something that is fresh and vivid even though it’s told from alternating perspectives. This device works here and fleshes out the backstories rather nicely. The prison scenes seem particularly authentic as well they should given that the author volunteered at prisons for years. This is a terrific and psychologically incisive novel that kept me utterly engrossed.

I haven’t seen much early buzz about The Captives and I’m not sure why, the blurb alone is eye catching and the cover caught my eye immediately as well, and then I started reading this gem. A profound and sharply intelligent crime novel is a rarity, don’t get me wrong, I love my crime fiction and devour it weekly, but most of the books that fall under the umbrella of CF don’t hold a candle to The Captives, this is a special book from an incredibly talented writer, they type I won’t soon forget.This flips back and forth between Frank and Miranda’s perspectives and each were equally enthralling. Miranda is in prison, at the start her crime is blurry but you do know she is serving serious time and her lack of hope and total desperation is heartbreakingly apparent. Frank may not actually be a prisoner himself but he is a slave to his own tortured soul and his pain and despair was also woefully raw. Their relationship is harrowing yet beautifully restrained, not having any clue how things would play out kept me on the edge of my seat throughout and you just know things won’t end well for these two.Immergut’s prose is lyrical and astute, her knowledge of the inner workings of a women’s prison is glaringly clear and heart wrenching all at once, some of these women’s personal stories were achingly sad. There was such an authenticity to this aspect that it was hard to stomach at times, but nothing so disturbing that I was bothered too much. I was reminded of Laura Lippman, it had that same well executed sophistication as both her plotting and writing has and I bet fans of her work will enjoy this one as much as I did.The Captives in three words: Intelligent, Enthralling and Keen.

Opinião: https://livrosepapel.blogspot.com/202...

Review to follow as part of the blog tour.

Este livro foi bastante diferente do que eu estava à espera. A premissa cativou-me por completo, mas de certo que não contava com a história desvendada. Está muito bem escrita, com capítulos alternados entre Miranda e Frank que não nos mostram apenas o presente, mas também pormenores importantes sob

A revealing portrait of a prison psychologist and the decisions made when he finds his high school crush sitting in front of him as a potential client. As Frank reminds us, we must put ourselves in his and Miranda's shoes rather than immediately pronounce judgment. I found myself holding my breath as the plot escalated both in the present and the past. Did not give this book the highest rating for two reasons -- the misleading cover and the sometimes choppy delivery of the back stories. Thank you to Ecco and Edelweiss for a digital ARC of this book.

Un vero thriller psicologico, fortemente incentrato sulla psiche di una paziente e del suo terapista.La situazione dei protagonisti è molto particolare: si trovano all'interno di una prigione, dove si sa le emozioni sono amplificate. Per di più i due si sono conosciuti molto tempo prima, durante il periodo scolastico.Legati da un filo sottile, Frank e Miranda ci faranno dubitare spesso della loro sanità mentale. A volte la mente di uno psicologo può essere molto più labile di quella di una paziente in carcere.Assurdo vero? A me lo è sembrato. Questa storia mi ha fatta molto pensare e mi è piaciuta proprio per questo.Siamo abituati a dare per scontato tante cose, ma in realtà siamo tutti esseri umani e tutti cediamo ai desideri del nostro corpo e della nostra mente.Unica pecca di questo libro credo sia la mancanza di elementi che riescono a coinvolgere il lettore emotivamente, non ho sentito nessun feeling con i protagonisti. Questo può essere un elemento che importa o meno, ma io preferisco specificarlo.Lo stile di scrittura mi è piaciuto, scorre molto e riesce comunque ad essere dettagliato.Il passato dei protagonisti è ben narrato, come anche il presente al di fuori dei loro incontri.Alla fine della lettura sono riuscita ad avere un quadro generale ben chiaro e posso dire che questo libro è totalmente approvato dalla sottoscritta!

3.5 Review to come!

Thank you so much to Ecco Books for providing my free copy of THE CAPTIVES by Debra Jo Immergut - all opinions are my own.Frank Lundquist is a psychologist at the Milford Basin Correctional Facility. He’s had some professional setbacks that landed him this very undesirable job, but when his new patient Miranda Greene walks through the door, everything changes. He had a big crush on her in high school and she’s still as charming as ever, but she doesn’t seem to remember who he is. Miranda is haunted by her past, losing hope, and full of despair. He is wondering why someone like Miranda Greene, the beautiful daughter of a congressman, is in prison for such a brutal crime. He has an ethical obligation to reassign the case, but what’s the harm if she doesn’t remember him?I’ve never read a psychological thriller quite like this one. It’s an exquisitely written and intelligent book that I cannot stop thinking about. The chapters alternate between Frank’s perspective in first person and Miranda’s in the third. Both Miranda and Frank are traumatized by their past and it’s interesting to see how their stories play out. I also really enjoyed the back stories and how everything connects together in due time.The language is vivid, descriptive, and the details are authentic and well researched. I felt the harrowing tension and claustrophobic atmosphere because Immergut writes about prison life so brilliantly. It’s a very intriguing concept that it can be just as dangerous to be “captive” inside your own mind. THE CAPTIVES is a stellar debut! It’s very character-driven, compelling, and has a fantastic ending you won’t see coming! Highly recommended!

*3.5 StarsI’m always intrigued by stories that involve seemingly good people who end up making really bad decisions. What compels them to take a particular path? How easy is it for them to push their morality and ethics aside? The Captives piqued my interest very early on. I was drawn into the characters’ lives and wanted to know what made them tick.Whenever I’m reading, I like to put myself in the characters’ shoes. As a prison psychologist, what would I do if my high school crush walked into my office as an inmate who was sentenced for murder? After picking my jaw up off of the desk, I would like to think that I would recuse myself from being his therapist, but wouldn’t we all like to assume that we would make the best decision. After all those years, Frank still found himself captivated by Miranda. He was fully aware that he shouldn’t be treating Miranda, but since she didn’t seem to have any memory of Frank, he was too caught up in his own feelings to make the ethical decision. Oh, Frank!I enjoyed the pace of the story and how it went back and forth between the two characters. I wanted to discover all of the details from their pasts and find out what put them in their current situations. It was almost like watching a train wreck, I already knew that nothing good was going to come of it, and yet I couldn’t really tear myself away. Frank and Miranda were both plagued by devastating events from their pasts. Both of them were trying to recover, move forward, and make something positive from their experiences, however, their road to redemption was never going to be paved smoothly.The Captives was well written and intriguing. I found myself on pins and needles, waiting for everything to come to the pivotal, climactic peak. When it did, I was left feeling a little disappointed. Having enjoyed my time reading the book, the ending felt over the top and completely unbelievable to me. I know it’s fiction, and I do go with the flow with the books that I read, but it just went a bit out of my scope of possibility. But with that being said, I would read another book by this author.

Fantastic, compelling, funny and dark. This is a terrific new novel with a fresh voice and penetrating prose. Into the office of a prison psychologist with a checkered past waltzes the girl he had an unrequited crush on in high school. Professional ethics say he should immediately hand her to another practitioner, but instead he takes her on as a client, and increasingly as an obsession. But she's no ordinary girl. She's a convicted killer. Minimal violence but plenty of tension, vivid scenes, ripping narrative -- it's all here. There are times you think you are ahead of the characters, in terms of figuring out what is going on, but there are enough surprises to change your mind. A wonderfully ambiguous ending. Highly recommend.

This is the first book by Debra Jo Immergut that I have had the pleasure of reading and reviewing but judging by how much I enjoyed this book, it certainly won’t be the last book by her that I read. I really did enjoy it but more about that in a bit.Miranda and Frank are two people, who knew each other back when they were in the same year at school. Frank had a crush on Miranda but she knows nothing about it. They reunite in the most desperate of circumstances. Miranda is currently incarcerated in a women’s prison and is in there because she has been found guilty of murder. Frank is the prison psychologist, who is available to see the women, who are in need of counselling or psychological therapy. Frank can’t believe it when Miranda enters the room and sits in front of him. Miranda doesn’t recognise him at first but she has a feeling that his face seems familiar. I started off feeling sorry for Miranda and at times I wanted to just give her a huge hug. We don’t find out what exactly happened when Miranda murdered someone all in one go. Instead the author drops little clues and hints throughout the book that gradually come together like all the pieces of a jigsaw. Frank is similar to Miranda in the sense that both have been through their own psychological trauma and are trying to make sense of what happened. Frank is passionate about his work, which I completely understand and got because I would love to have Frank’s job as I find psychology fascinating.If there’s one thing I like, it’s discovering new authors and reading a good psychological thriller. Well ‘The Captives’ certainly ticked both of those boxes. I was hooked on this book from the moment I picked this book up. The synopsis certainly intrigued me and I was interested to see how the story would develop. I became addicted to reading this book and I regularly had to have my next fix of ‘The Captives’. I initially picked up this book only intending to read a chapter but 5 chapters later and I was still reading. The author’s writing style is such that you can’t fail to be drawn into the story. The author uses such powerful descriptions that I could fully appreciate the claustrophobic nature of a prison. At times I really did feel as though I was in prison and living in fearful anticipation of what might happen next in the powder keg of a prison.The story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Frank and Miranda. Frank’s chapter is voiced in the first person and Miranda’s chapters are in the third person. This way of telling the story works really well and the story flows seamlessly. It was sometimes harrowing to read about what led to the circumstances of Miranda’s jail sentence. In a way both Miranda and Frank have been traumatised by circumstances of their past and because I am a nosy parker, it was fascinating to read about what happened to them to make them react as they did and how they turned into the people that we find in this book.In conclusion, I really did enjoy ‘The Captives’ and I will most certainly look out for other books by this author. I would definitely recommend this book to other readers. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a well deserved 4* out of 5*.

I've fallen behind. In everything. And although I have finished reading nine books since my last Reading post on April 23 (and tossed aside three more after having reached between page 50 and 100), I'm choosing to focus on only one because I want to use what little influence I have to encourage its wider readership and I worry it will be lost in the glut of novels promoted as summer/beach reads, misrepresented by comparisons with all those novels with Girl or Train or Window in their titles, which would be both reductive and mistaken, but all too often it is the easy-out sort of comparison that gets published and called a review.I don't review. I appreciate. (Which is another reason I'm not writing about a lot of the eight other books I read since my April 23rd post.) So, I give you:The Captives, Debra Jo Immergut, Hardcover, 288pp, June 2018, EccoFrank Lundquist is a psychologist whose loss of emotional control with a young patient cost him his private practice, reducing him to a basement-office position as inmate psychologist in a New York State women's prison.Into his office walks the girl-of-his-high school-dreams, Miranda Green, whose lack of emotional judgment cost her the freedom and privileged life into which she'd been born, reducing her to the state-issued yellow uniform and inmate number she wears.In chapters with alternating points of view --- Frank's narrative in first-person, Miranda's in close-third --- the compelling trajectory of their re-union and re-acquaintance is teased, piecemeal, interwoven with a tessellation of details from their histories --- together and separately --- creating a psychological thriller in which each detail matters, the pieces adding up to a carefully wrought, unexpected whole.Both Frank and Miranda are in the grip of obsessions, in thrall to their pasts, most especially regrets about who they might have been and wishes about opportunities missed, and the yearning to, somehow, undo what was done --- or, to do now what was not done then. Debra Jo Immergut masterfully observes the ways in which people operate from different levels and layers of identity in pursuit of their life-goals, in pursuit of love, in pursuit of escape, in pursuit of revision --- the grown up version of the child's game-losing plea, "Pretend that didn't happen!" This is an exploration of the lengths to which one will go when the other players in that life as playground-scenario taunt with, "No takebacks!"And make no mistake, while this is a fast-moving, stay-up-all-night read about crime, punishment, escape, and Mr. Ripley-esque otherness, those are maguffins --- fascinating and captivating maguffins, but, maguffins nevertheless, tools with which Debra Jo Immergut explores the nature of human behavior, the journey to and from self, and the shapes desire takes, and the limits and lines people cross when desperate to extricate themselves from their past, their present, the reality they've made. This is about what someone will do when faced with the dichotomy of "pretend that didn't happen" versus "no takebacks!"Along the way there is wonderful, well-shaped prose, including my very favorite line, one I wish I'd written: "The last thing she wanted to do was kill herself only to wake up alive." That's a great line and it works on all sorts of levels in this narrative.Both Frank and Miranda have nearly dead past selves; Frank's with an ex-wife and a once promising career, Miranda with a dangerous ex-lover and a father who was once a successful politician but has become an operator in the shadows of not quite legal lobbying, and a sister who died in a car sort-of accident, and ... well, I don't want to give away too many pieces of the story, the fabric of which you will enjoy discovering as you read.Suffice to say that when Frank and Miranda meet, later in life, both in failure mode, Frank instantly recognizes his high school dream girl, while Miranda seems not to know who Frank is, rather, she merely sees him as a means to an end, a stranger, until she realizes who he is --- or, did she actually know all the time? It's all part of the mystery: What is discovered and known when? By whom? Who uses whom? Who crosses more lines and is the most double-crossing and back-pedaling? And when and how are the truths and untruths recognized, who on the canvas of characters --- the other inmates who Miranda befriends or makes enemies of, Frank's renowned psychiatrist father, and his drug addicted brother and his dealer --- are complicit in what unfolds?Frank asks at the beginning of the narrative who knows what they would do in circumstances such as he finds himself in, a question that also applies to Miranda, and it is that question which drives the novel. These two main characters begin the story with each of them trying to let go of the dead-self they once were, but in the course of their journey, each wonders if the other might not be able to revive that lost part of them. Is it possible to erase the past in the present? Or, are we forever trapped in who we are, who we've been, and the choices we've made?This is a tale about the different ways in which a person can be held captive outside of prison bars, caged by circumstance and emotions, history and desire. Debra Jo Immergut does the question justice and It keeps the reader guessing and riveted in this kickass debut novel.

Antes de tudo quero dar os parabéns à editora Suma de Letras por estar a trazer thrillers tão bons até aos leitores portugueses. Estou deveras surpresa com a qualidade de thrillers que nos tem chegado no primeiro trimestre deste ano. A Reclusa de Debra Jo Immergut é um entre vários deles que estão no meu destaque de thrillers de 2020. Trata-se de mais uma história marcante, com uma narrativa inesquecível e mais importante: arrepiante e misteriosa do início ao fim.Para mim este livro trata-se quase de uma leitura obsessiva, assim que começamos a leitura é praticamente impossível pousar o livro. É como está referido na capa hipnótico, explosivo e obsessivo. Nem eu poderia dizer melhor. A Reclusa de Debra Jo Immergut é um thriller que facilmente agrada aos leitores deste género literário. Com uma narrativa fluída, personagens que nos fazem perder a cabeça e mistérios atrás de mistérios. Consigo descrever o enredo desta história com uma só palavra: incrível. É daqueles livros que se destaque entre o género, não só por ter um enredo tão único e fora do comum, mas por estar cheio de reviravoltas intensas.É verdade que ao início demorei para conseguir apaixonar-me pelas personagens, os primeiros capítulos estava um pouco de pé atrás com o que poderia vir a acontecer. Fiz diversas teorias, apesar de muitas delas terem sido um tiro ao lado, acabou por ser aquilo que já esperava. O final foi aquilo que o livro merecia, deixou-me um pouco triste, pois assim que terminei a leitura senti um vazio: um sentimento de querer mais e não ter. A Reclusa trata-se nada mais do que uma obsessão, é a palavra que descreve a relação destas duas personagens. É um thriller carregado de muita ação, bem como drama. É uma história bem pensada e muito inteligente.Se procuram um livro frio e duro para ler, A Reclusa de Debra Jo Immergut é uma ótima leitura. Acreditem que vão surpreender-se com esta história, podem começar a leitura e aborrecer-se, contudo com o desenrolar da história vão ficar de tal forma agarrados à história que não vão querer parar de ler. É daqueles livros cheios de reflexões, onde vemos as nossas personagens a lutar até conseguirem aquilo que realmente querem e mais sonham. É um retrato cru do que o ser humano é capaz de fazer, seja por amor ou por ser livre.Uma leitura compulsiva que recomendo vivamente aos fãs deste género literário. Para aqueles que procuram um thriller mais psicológico é também uma boa aposta. É verdade que Debra Jo Immergut tem uma escrita que nos faz perder no enredo em três passos. A forma como consegue narrar todos os acontecimentos fazendo com que o leitor entre na história e viva quase na primeira fila tudo. É deveras incrível, vibrei imenso com a história e senti quase na pele tudo o que acontecia. Bem narrado, com personagens que nos surpreendem, é um dos thrillers que mais me surpreendeu este ano.

This is my favorite kind of novel, smart searing portraits of real people that is also an ingenious psychological thriller. It delves psychology and American prisons, following Frank, a psychologist at a state prison, who, in the course of his professional work with inmates runs into his high school crush, Miranda Greene. She's as beguiling as ever, but doesn't remember him. What follows is a riveting narrative that moves with velocity even as it gains psychological and emotional depth.

Debra Jo Immergut’s debut novel is about the magnetic relationship between a troubled prison psychologist named Frank Lundquist and the inmate who changes the course of his life forevermore. The moment Miranda Greene walks into one of his counseling sessions at a women’s prison in New York, Frank immediately recognizes her as his former high school crush. Frank’s not sure she even knew he existed, and he’s almost certain Miranda doesn’t recognize him at their therapy session. One thing is certain, however: things will never be the same for either of them after that initial meeting. As Miranda struggles with coming to terms with the 52-year sentence she is serving for second degree murder, Frank struggles with both his emotional reaction to seeing Miranda again and his feelings of ineptitude when it comes to his career. They both become trapped in a downward spiral when Miranda gets stuck in a rut of depression and Frank makes a dangerous plan to help Miranda escape prison for good. Each of them thinks they are in control, which makes the lead-up to the conclusion all the more tragic and unexpected. But boy, what an ending it is! I applaud the author for making the prison scenes in this novel realistic and heartfelt. She also does a wonderful job of conveying appropriate boundaries in a patient-therapist relationship by creatively titling her chapters. This makes Frank and Miranda’s various transgressions throughout the novel all the more scandalous. All in all, The Captives is a smart and unique addition to the crime fiction genre.