Published in 2015 by Fleuve Éditions, The Never List by Koethi Zan achieved international success. As her second thriller, The Follower, was recently published by the same publisher, Nice Premium revisits this thrilling novel.
Sarah and Jennifer have been friends forever, they do almost everything together, particularly planning their future and taking precautions. They have made a list of dangers to avoid, a list of mistakes not to make, the never list.
– Don’t go alone to the library at night
– Don’t park more than six spots away from your destination
– Don’t trust a stranger
– Don’t go out without your pepper spray
– Always locate the exits
– Always follow the rules
– Never panic
And yet despite everything, one day, they make a mistake. A mistake that will cost them several years of freedom.
In The Never List, we do not follow the story of Sarah and Jennifer’s captivity, we focus on the aftermath… We discover Sarah, ten years after her captivity, nestled in her comforting apartment in New York, from which she hardly ever leaves. Yet, Sarah must soon face a terrible choice: to go out and testify at the parole hearing of their tormentor or stay home and risk his release.
With her, we will trace back the years gone by. Through flashback chapters, Koethi Zan allows us to glimpse the years of Sarah and Jennifer’s captivity, as well as that of the other victims, Tracy and Christine. But above all, she allows us to enter the daily lives of these victims, through their reconstructions.
With fine analysis, the author deciphers behaviors, physical and mental scars, denial, and the forgetting of certain events… With intelligence, Koethi Zan avoids falling into the easy trap of describing the tortures and skillfully flirts with the lines.
We are absorbed by Sarah’s past and by her current struggle, which will bring new elements to light in an already terrible investigation. We become attached to Tracy and Sarah, the two victims most involved in this new investigation, two interesting, fragile, and strong personalities.
It’s impossible to put down the book before the final resolution, Koethi Zan offers an intense and intelligent page-turner.
