Review: Prisoned

Prisoned by Marni Mann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Real rating: 2.5

Title (Título): Prisoned

Author (Autor): Marni Mann

Genre (Género): Dark romance/Dark

Publication date (Fecha de publicación): August, 22nd, 2016

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Good plot, not so god plotting.

The book is narrated in two time spaces, present and past, and with two POVs (Kyle's and Garin's). It starts at their teenage years, introducing them and their best friend Billy, who live in a very poor neighbourhood and dedicate to steel and sell drugs to survive. Then it rushes to the present time where Billy has died from an overdose. Kyle and Garin haven't seen each other in more than ten years, since Paulie's (Billy's brother) death, but the funeral of him brings them both together again. Kyle, however holds a big secret that she can't tell no matter how much guilt it brings her, because if she did it would kill her. And she specially can't tell Garin. So, against her best reasoning, she accedes to have a drink with him and next she knows if that she wakes up in a cell, prisoned with Garin to her side. They have been drugged and she knows that the responsible for this is aware of what she did and is going to punish her for it.

So far so good, right? Exactly. The idea was very good, but how it developed was easy to guess, for a trained eye. Now I'm not going to spoil anything to you, don't worry. But I'm going to say that from the beginning I knew what her big secret was and I had a intuition of who had put them in that cell, because it was the most logical thing to reason by how and how many characters were presented. Then again, there was one particular POV that gave it completely away halfway through the story. When the book was coming to an end it took a twist and I thought "If it actually follows it this is going to be a great story to me because it'd have surprised me", but it indeed didn't and my thoughts on what her big secret was and who was the responsible for their prisoning were unluckily right.

That said the story became a little slow for me to read. I finished it no matter how, but I wasn't hooked.

About the characters I'll say that I liked Kyle as a person, but she annoyed me a lot repeating a hundred times that she had a big secret. The reader can understand that the first or second time and maybe it would have been better so see/feel how much it really affected her. Anyhow, she was a tough woman and much braver than she thought, so hats off to her.

And Garin is a well built asshole. I don't like his life style. I love the character.

To conclude, I really liked the ending, it's kind of an open one (not a cliffhanger) and it was the BEST part of the plot to me. If it had ended any different, if we had known exactly what happened I could have really dislike this. But I didn't.

I know this is a harsh review and by no means I intend to harm anyone's feelings. I know someone put all of her into this, it just didn't do it for me. I had a hard time writing this myself because I felt kind of guilty, but I wanted to be honest as I was asked. Summing up: YES, I like the idea; NO, I didn't like how it was developed because as I've said it was guessable and that changed everything for me; YES, I love the ending and YES, I'd read this author again.

I think Marni Mann has plenty potencial and a great mind, so I'd love to try something by her again. So don't let my thoughts stop you from reading it if this looks appealing to you!

*ARC kindly provided in exchange for an honest review*