Amelie has been orphaned at the age of sixteen. Her mother died when Amelie was a very young child and after her father dies of an illness, she is alone in the world and decides to go to London to find her way in life. There she meets a group of friends, three young women who are working for a magazine headed by Ned Hawthorne, the pampered playboy son of a millionaire. Amelie winds up getting a job working at the magazine too, and Ned talks her into flying to Vegas with him to act as his assistant while there.
Ned winds up talking young Amelie into marrying him in Vegas, but only as a business arrangement. He tells her it's so that his family will stop pressuring him into marrying a family friend and in exchange, he will pay for her to go to college. They only need to remain married for two weeks and then she will be freed, after they publicly act as if they rushed into the marriage too fast.
Upon returning to London, Amelie and Ned are kidnapped and taken to a house to be kept in separate rooms. Amelie is kept in total darkness so she can't tell the passage of time but she can hear Ned's voice in the room below hers. At this point the reader knows that Amelie hates Ned and is fearful of him, but not the reason behind it. The story bounces between present (where Amelie is prisoner) and past (where we learn of everything that has occurred leading up to the kidnapping). What Amelie didn't know is that Ned was using her as cover for nefarious acts. He had been accused of sexually assaulting one of her London friends as well as multiple others. Ned took her phone and broke her laptop while in Vegas, so she wouldn't see it being reported in the news.
Ned turns out to be so much more dangerous than Amelie originally thought, which is revealed in the "past" chapters of the book. But we are left to wonder if Amelie should be more fearful of Ned or of her faceless, voiceless kidnappers. The "past" chapters and the "present" chapters eventually align. We learn of Amelie's fate and get answers to the events that lead up to the kidnapping.
This author writes a good thriller, and while I didn't think this was her best (check out The Dilemma or Behind Closed Doors for this blogger's faves), the story kept me interested and I would still recommend reaching for this newest one by B.A. Paris.
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