[Review] The Passenger - Lisa Lutz

Summary: 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? (Pub Date: Mar 1, 2016)

The review is based on the ARC received thanks to Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for allowing it.

Actual grade is 3.5.

This is a book hard to summarize because I don't know how to call the main character. I will go for Tanya, which is the first name I identified her with.

Tanya is not a lucky woman. Living an unfulfilled marriage simply because she needed that safety nest, she has to flee carrying little when she finds her husband dead after falling the stairs. She knows that even if she is not caught for that, her past would still get her if she stays. However, getting a new identity isn't easy, and there are still people after her. While she does everything to survive in freedom, we gradually learn why she couldn't stay.

This wasn't a book I enjoyed because I wanted to know what would be of Tanya but the more I found out of her past the found I couldn't put it down until I knew it all. To a point I wanted to skip the present-times parts right to the big revelations.

The author knew how to tease us. In the end of most of the chapters, we read exchanges of emails between two characters with unfamiliar names, naming unfamiliar people, through words filled with resentment. In the actual story, those people will pop out in a memory from Tanya and just get you itching to discover more.

However, Tanya's escape scenes were also good. Most of the time I would question if she really need to be so extreme. Even after finishing this, I still wonder. A lot of the book wasn't necessary, in my opinion. That doesn't mean it wasn't good. Wow, was that powerful! I confess it was exciting to see Tanya's development, accepting her choices or not.

I don't think I did enjoy Tanya herself. I did pity her for the big big big problem in the book, which through her in the mess. And yet, I didn't feel connected to a point that I wanted her life to go back to normal. I didn't like any of the book characters, except for some that were in it very little, like young Andrew. Some could have been likable if they were so suspicious, like Blue, or so patently guilty of something (even if we didn't know what exactly), like Ryan. The characters still were just a fraction, for the thriller kept me going to the end.

Perhaps, not the best story but a great storytelling. 

Rating: 4 out of 5