The Passenger by Lisa Lutz Published by Simon & Schuster on March 1st 2016
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 320
Format: Kindle Book
Source: NetGalley and Simon & Schuster
From the author of the New York Times bestselling Spellman Files series, Lisa Lutz’s latest blistering thriller is about a woman who creates and sheds new identities as she crisscrosses the country to escape her past: you’ll want to buckle up for the ride!
In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it...
Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time.
She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy―and dangerous―alliance is born.
It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret…can she outrun her past?
With heart-stopping escapes and devious deceptions, The Passenger is an amazing psychological thriller about defining yourself while you pursue your path to survival. One thing is certain: the ride will leave you breathless.
**Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for supplying my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.**
The passenger is a fast paced thriller. I can’t really call it a psychological thriller. It’s rather a mystery thriller. By all means, it is a very suspenseful one.
In The Passenger a young woman, Tanya, is on the run. The thriller starts with Tanya’s husband dead. His body lies on the floor. Tanya thinks it over then decides to run away. We get to know through Tanya that she didn’t do it. However, leaving this way puts Tanya in a very suspicious situation and it definitely leaves the readers wondering. It feels like you entered the cinema in the middle of the movie! You need someone to tell you what’s going on. Tanya soon changes her identity. We soon know that Tanya is not her real identity. May be her real name is Jo. Along this ride, she gets so many identities and even different looks. She is always running to escape a past we know nothing about. She can trust no one and yet a lot happens on this explosive ride. As the heroine goes through this ride, the readers go on a roller coaster. Things are going from bad to worse and we have no clue. Well, for sure the whole picture is there at the end.
I have contradicting thoughts about The Passenger. I was really worn out by this book. The ride was too tough. Jo is always running and taking bad decisions (from my point of view). I couldn’t breathe. I felt I was running with her. It was like going down through a spiral moving from bad to worse. I didn’t have any clue.
The book is really hard to rate. I kept having different thoughts about it. At first I liked it, because it was very suspenseful. I don’t like predictable thrillers. This book definitely wasn’t predictable. When I reached the middle or the third quarter of the book I was fed up. Jo is always on the run for no convincing reasons so far. As the book’s cover showed a dark road, my path through the book was dark. I needed something to show up. It was when I reached the final quarter that I liked the book again. I even liked it so much. The puzzle started to unfold. The story started speeding up and things started to make sense.
I liked the fast pace of The Passenger. I was also glad it wasn’t predictable. Lisa Lutz storytelling was good. The first voice narration puts you inside Jo’s head. You feel how confused and lost she is yet you still need explanation.
However, I still have some issues with this book. It wasn’t convincing how Jo could easily switch her identities, break into houses, and even steal. It sounded like Jo outsmarted everyone, while to me Jo was anything but smart. I really didn’t like Jo and couldn’t take her side whether innocent or guilty. The overall atmosphere of the book was dark just as the book cover implies.
Overall, I liked The Passenger. It was a different type of thriller where you really have no clue till the end. And by the end I really mean the end. However, I have to admit it’s not a book that everyone will like. It depends on your tolerance for dark suspense. To me, I highly appreciate unpredictable thrillers.
About Lisa Lutz
Lisa Lutz is the New York Times bestselling author of the six books in the Spellman series, How to Start a Fire, Heads you Lose (with David Hayward), and the children’s book, How to Negotiate Everything (illustrated by Jaime Temairik). Her latest book, The Passenger, a psychological thriller, will be published March 2016 by Simon and Schuster. Lutz has won the Alex award and has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Although she attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England, and San Francisco State University, she still does not have a bachelor’s degree. Lisa spent most of the 1990s hopping through a string of low-paying odd jobs while writing and rewriting the screenplay Plan B, a mob comedy. After the film was made in 2000, she vowed she would never write another screenplay. Lisa lives in the Hudson Valley, NY.