Keeping Her In The Light

Keeping Her In The Light by Nicole Fuentes is a psychological thriller novella written by a 16-year-old Filipino student. It is about a woman named Allie who was kidnapped by a serial killer who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. The kidnapper wants to try out if the Stockholm Syndrome is true and he uses Allie as a subject. Allie had gone through a very tragic experience wherein her parents and younger brother were all shot in front of her before their crazed neighbor shot himself sparing Allie.

The plot was very intriguing so I was lured to buy the book. And boy did I regret it!

This is possibly one of the blah books I've read in my life! It was so annoying! It was too trying hard to be good and by that the author thought putting in big words would make it a great novel. After a few pages I thought of chucking it out the window but I thought might as well give it a chance and finish it. And I did!

The story is about a woman kidnapped by a serial killer. She was used as an experiment of the said killer on Stockholm Syndrome, which is the ability of a captive to feel sympathy for the captor.

I have a beef with the victim in the story. She wasn't exhibiting the normal reactions of a victim. She wasn't afraid. She's too normal for want of a better word. I'll be very detailed about this beef I have with the victim...

1. When she woke up, she was 'supposedly' afraid. She was able to find the switch to the light and saw the gory scene of her captor's earlier killing. She stumbled and all and when she found the door, she went out and found the man who kidnapped her. He was eating, seemingly stoic, raising his brows and not really reacting to her presence.

She was afraid but she was able to process all that. And she sat across the table and talked to him.

From this point on, the story obviously became a haphazard attempt to be an intellectual one. It wasn't.

2. The captor was given his own perspective in the book. Which is very strange, if you ask me. He was given emotions and instead of making the story captivating, the attempt to humanize the captor actually fell flat. He wasn't the normal serial killer. He wasn't deranged. He was actually a very overacting serial killer wannabe!

3. Again, the captive's attention to detail was pretty amazing. I mean she was able to take in the surroundings. She was able to appreciate the beauty of the ballroom and the lounge. She was able to process decisions in her head whether to go to room 1 or 4, to west wing or east, to go up or down. She was able to even talk to herself like she's just deciding whether to get up for work or just stay in bed.

4. She wore high heels! My goodness! How can a captive run when she's wearing high heels for crying out loud! In my experience reading thriller novels, the captive immediately finds a way to free herself of restrictions to freedom. A pair of high heels is clearly a restriction. She took it off for a while but she put it back on. I can only shake my head on that glaring lack of common sense and survival instinct.

5. She would be used by her captor as an experiment on Stockholm Syndrome. But then he told her that. And he wasn't acting like he wanted her to feel sympathy towards him. In fact, he was acting fairly annoying! Which might be the point to the story but then again I didn't get it.

6. I do get it that the kidnapper was suffering from MPD. But, come on! You didn't really get that the person had MPD until the end of the book! And only when the names of the alters were introduced.

This book was trying so hard to become a big psycho thriller but the writer forgot that a really good story doesn't necessarily need highfalutin words to make the story grand. It's in the simplicity of the story, in the character development, in the plot itself. That's what makes a novel really good!

I would have given this book 1 star but opted for 2 for effort.


***
Keeping Her In The Light rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Note: This post was a book review I did back in November 28, 2010 in my old Addicted to Reading blog. And looking back, I think I'd give this book a 1 out of 5 stars. I will edit my review of this in Goodreads.