Ruthless
by Carolyn Lee Adams
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: July 14th 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Thriller, Contemporary, Mystery
A spine-tingling debut about the ultimate game of cat-and-mouse in reverse as a teen struggles to retain hope—and her sanity—while on the run from a cunning and determined killer.
Ruth Carver has always competed like her life depends on it. Ambitious. Tough. Maybe even mean. It’s no wonder people call her Ruthless.
When she wakes up with a concussion in the bed of a moving pickup trick, she realizes she has been entered into a contest she can’t afford to lose.
At a remote, rotting cabin deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ruth’s blindfold comes off and she comes face-to-face with her captor. A man who believes his mission is to punish bad girls like Ruth. A man who has done this six times before.
The other girls were never heard from again, but Ruth won’t go down easy. She escapes into the wilderness, but her hunter is close at her heels. That’s when the real battle begins. That’s when Ruth must decides just how far she’ll go in order to survive.
Back home, they called her Ruthless. They had no idea just how right they were.
Ruth is not a perfect person. She is spoiled and competitive. She doesn’t care who she pushes down in order to get to the top. That’s how she earns the nickname Ruthless. We also see a different side of Ruth as she experiences flashbacks about her life. Ruth is a survivor, it’s something that stands out in her flashbacks and in her battle against her abductor. She is smart and cunning and she gives herself goals to survive. I felt like I was there with Ruth and that’s probably why it was scaring me. So many times when she dragged herself up, I was thinking about how I would have just let myself be eaten by an animal or something.
Carol Lee Adam’s writing in brillant. The way the flashbacks meshed so well with the story kept you informed without the characters feeling like they are info dumping. You get to see the perspective of the Wolfman and even though there are things that I was still curious about, it was definitely enough to understand how deranged he is. Every time he talked about sobriety and things making his skull right. I was felt disturbed. I felt like the story was so real that my head was telling me to look up news articles about the whole thing and then I had to be like wait, it’s not real.
The ending was good too but I don’t want to give anything away. The whole book was good, it’s not like anything I’ve read before. I’ve never read an abduction story, this one really freaked me out (in that weird good way) but I’m glad I read this one. Just don’t read it at night, like I did and now I look over my shoulder everywhere I go.
It was hard to make a playlist.
