Hostage

A Novel

By: Clare Mackintosh

Narrated by: Vinette Robinson

Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

The explosively addictive locked-room thriller from New York Times best seller Clare Mackintosh! A lot can happen in 20 hours when you're at 38,000 feet....

A claustrophobic thriller set over 20 hours on one airplane flight, with the heart-stopping tension of The Last Flight and the wrenching emotional intensity of Room, Hostage takes us on board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply. It's 20 hours to landing. A lot can happen in 20 hours....

©2021 Clare Mackintosh (P)2021 Random House Audio

Slower to start but…

Once it gets going- hang on! Great story and interesting finish. Definitely worth the listen!

Do Not Listen to This Book On the Plane

No, really. Just have a nice flight. I wouldn't even recommend this story to someone that was going to fly soon. It's a great beach listen, but only if you are driving to the beach.
The weakest part of this audiobook was the narrator. She didn't change the quality of her voice as characters changed, so it was hard to know who was speaking at times.
Overall, this was a fantastic, suspenseful book and I'm sure it will be a movie in the near future.

Great story!!

Could not stop listening to this book!! The only problem I had was keeping up with which character was speaking. The narrator was very good but it’s a lot to ask someone to be all the characters.

Just ok

Extremely predictable and a bit preachy, was not a fan of the reader either. Overall just disappointed

Slow to take off but rises to a crescendo

As an avgeek, when I saw the airplane on the cover I was immediately intrigued. I was further intriguiged when I read the summary. I did not know much if anything about the author, so I decided to move it to the top of my audiobook list. Early in the novel, I thought i had made a huge mistake. The first quarter of so of the book is standard chick lit with a lot of blah-blahing about feelings, relationships, etc. I was thinking "where is the commercial aviation thriller this appeared to be?" I felt it was a bait-and-switch. Fortunately, Mackintosh eventually got to what I expected of the book and it turned out to be a realy good airplane hostage story albeit it with a twist.

*BEWARE - SPOILERS COMING*

With many books of this type, you expect "Oh, hostages on an airplane? More Muslim terrorists." That is not the case here. The villians were the eco-radicals, as in the "climate change is going to destroy the planet in 10 year" crowd. I thought that the book does a great job capturing just how much "climate change" has become a religion for some extremists. Their views are based on faith not so diffrent than Islamic extremists. The author walks you through how the ringleader of this group radicalized suspectible people on his crew - just like leaders of Islamic terror cells. It was a very interesting twist even if one is not a fan of commercial aviation fiction. But since I am a fan of such fiction, I was greatly relived once the book transitioned into that phase and I was glad I did not give up on <i>Hostage</i> during the chick lit early stages. This is a credible airplane hostage story that I can receommend to other avgeek readers.

Ehhhhhh *shrug*

I didn’t dislike or like this…the twist was kind of annoying to me and the narration was very hard to discern who was telling the story at any given time so it was hard to follow.

Predictable

Well written book, but pretty much exactly what I expected for a plane hijacking novel. Ending made it worthwhile.

One of the BEST Audio Books Ever!

I loved everything about this book! The story, the characters, the plot, the little girl, the narration, the suspense & mostly the ending, which was extra. She could've ended it at what we believed to be the logical conclusion, but the author took the story even further to a truly surprising and disturbing ending.

Toward the beginning, she almost lost me with a choice or two made by the heroine, who I mistakenly thought was going to be just another stupid female character. Ah, but I came to realize she is not dumb. Emotional and illogical, yes, but that does not equate to dumb. Maybe wrong -- I think we are meant to be the judge of that. I highly recommend this listen, but be prepared to be completely rapt!

Excellent

A very exciting story about an airplane taken over by terrorists, with leverage over one of the flight attendants— they’ll kill her daughter if she doesn’t help them get into the cockpit. The back stories of the main characters and the terrorists deepen the narrative and the suspense, with scary events taking place on the ground as well as in the air. Quite a thriller.

Meh - 3.5 stars

First, I read many reviews noting the singular narrator was a negative. I totally disagree. The narrator did a great job and each chapter clearly defined which character’s point of view it was.
My biggest thing was the story was just boring.
Yes there were a few unveilings and interesting parts within the story but I was just bored most of the way through. The minutiae far exceeded the riveting content.
The twist at the ending was great though. Took what would have been a 2-star rating up to a 3.5.