The Never List - Koethi Zan

**** 4 Torturous Stars ****

I'm on a streak of reading some pretty messed up Psychological Thrillers and I had to pick this one up and take a ride!

Likes
The book was overall very good - but not fantastic and a "must keep reading" to find out what happens next.....until the end.

I loved the story premise and it did take the reader on a journey through rough terrain never detouring through smooth roads.

I liked how the author flip-flopped back to the past within the present story as flashbacks instead of switching it between chapters.

Dislikes
I only had one dislike and that is major and it is the book didn't hold my attention the whole time. I was able to put the book down and do other things without anticipating the next page.

I also had a bit of a problem that the girls made nice-nice so fast.
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Jennifer and Sarah are best friends growing up and they experience a fatal accident which makes each of them paranoid to do anything that may end in death. They make a "Never List" to try and keep them safe - until they reach college and get a little lax on safety issues. They find themselves abducted and thrown in a cellar with 2 other girls.




During this time, Jennifer and Sarah are seperated while Jennifer lives in a box and her life ends by the hands of their sick abducter, The Professor. Sarah and the other 2 girls, Tracey and Christine are tortured weekly while The Professor takes notes on the reations of them along with brainwashing. This continues for 3 years and during this time, Sarah never finds out where Jennifer's body is buried but manages to escape and save the other girls.

Switch back to the present, 10 years later, and Sarah lives as a hermit in her highrise condo in New York. It is time for The Professor's parole hearing and Sarah is being coaxed to speak at the hearing to make sure he isn't let out of jail especially since he was able to marry a girl while incarcerated. She still gets puzzling letters from The Professor and it keeps pointing for her to return to the homestead. She still wants to find Jennifer's body and feels that if she can finally find it, then he will never be let out of jail.

Sarah travels back and finds out that a strange religious cult may play a part in The Professor's missing wife and maybe just maybe be tied to The Professor. Sarah asks for the help of Tracey and Christine to solve the puzzles.



What else transpires while the girls are back in the homestead will keep you on the edge of your seat!

#abuse #captive #dark

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About this Author

When Koethi Zan was born in the sleepy farming town of Opp, Alabama, the “City of Opportunity,” her mother was Valedictorian of the local public high school and her father the star of its football team. Her parents named her after the homecoming queen of Lurleen B. Wallace Junior College, perhaps hopeful that some of that glory would rub off on her.

But Koethi would never be a homecoming queen. In fact, she spent most of her youth in her room, reading, listening to Morrissey, and avoiding everything connected to high school football—not an easy task in those parts.

 After graduation, Koethi put herself through Birmingham-Southern College with scholarships and a small “cow fund” courtesy of Molly, the Charolais heifer she’d received as her third birthday present. She used the money wisely, travelling to New Orleans on the weekends to hit the club scene, almost always in silver-sequined costume, surrounded by transvestites, Goth kids and her gay male entourage. Perhaps, in some roundabout way, she had fulfilled her homecoming queen destiny after all.

       Then, in what may have been a misguided fit of pique, Koethi threw away her all-black daywear and her thrift-store evening gowns, and went to Yale Law School, with some vague idea of becoming a film producer. Afterwards, however, she unexpectedly found herself twenty-eight stories up in the Manhattan offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell, a prestigious white shoe law firm that represented mostly investment banks. She regularly pulled all-nighters working on secured financings and revolving credit facilities. She tended to wear demure black pantsuits, with her hair up.

       It didn’t take her long to realize corporate life wasn’t for her, and Koethi spent the next fifteen years practicing entertainment law both in private practice (at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and, later, Schreck Rose & Dapello) and in-house business and legal affairs positions (for the film producer, Ed Pressman, and, most recently, at MTV), with a slight detour along the way to study cinema at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

As an entertainment lawyer, Koethi attended glamorous premieres and openings, international film festivals and celebrity-filled parties. She dealt with gritty production issues as varied as suicide threats, drug overdoses and sex-tape allegations. She warred with Hollywood agents and befriended reality stars.

 Then, while Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel at MTV, she decided to fulfill a lifelong dream on the side, and in the early mornings she wrote a crime novel, The Never List.
Now, coming full circle in a way, Koethi, her husband, Stephen Metcalf, and their two daughters, live in an old farmhouse in a rural community in upstate New York. Her husband occasionally watches a football game on television. But her daughters have never even heard of homecoming queens.

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