His Kidnapper's Shoes
- Maggie James
- Mar 7, 2017
- 2 min read
This is the first book by Maggie James that I've read but it certainly won't be the last. Her writing is well paced, perfectly planned and full of emotion.
The story is written on two timelines with Daniel in the present time and Laura Bateman giving her story on both timelines. We get a good background story of Laura's early life, how she lost her mother, was sent to disastrous foster parents, became pregnant at a young age and just as things were looking better, she lost her grandmother. Laura had such a tragic start in life and Maggie James does a good job of making the reader feel so sorry for her, to the point that you would forgive her of almost anything.
At the same time we are crying buckets over Laura's life, Daniel's present day is being told in alternate chapters. Daniel is a complex characters, he isn't a loving family kind of guy, he dates women only for sex and sometimes dates men too when he's feeling particularly rough. Suddenly, he dates a woman who he can't get out of his mind (or his bed!) and he thinks that finally he has found someone he might possibly be able to spend the rest of his life with. The only problem is that she's about to take a job in Australia and wants him to come too. This is moving much too quickly for Daniel, he's feeling the pressure, and then the biggest, most shocking moment of his life hits him.
The pace of the book is very quick. There are no moments of boredom or any thought of skipping a bit because so much is happening all the time. I must admit that the story does have a certain predictability about it because from the first chapters, Laura on the dual timeline is telling her present day story from a police interview room. But none of that matters, it's not the guessing what happens that's important, it's how we get there and this story is a beautiful one to the very end. The whole telling of Daniel and Laura's life is so emotional and realistic that it doesn't matter that you can see the inevitable coming, you just have to keep reading to find out how it all happens.
This is an excellent telling of flawed characters who in different ways have had awful things happen in their lives to create complex and broken people. It's a story of struggle and hardship, of deep love, hate, confusion and a kind of forgiving too.
http://www.maggiejamesfiction.com/