This is the third time I have read this book, which makes it even more impressive that I STILL couldn't put it down, even though I knew what was going to happen.

This author has way of writing dialogue that makes her characters seem more real than actual people, in some ways. The pacing on this book is done very well, so that as soon as the tension from one crisis releases, another arises. She uses different time periods in the story put together in such a way that telling one story out of order provides tension for the first half of the book, and then the meat of the conflict (which is pretty meaty indeed) provides tension for the second half. At one point I thought I had reached the crisis scene of the book but there was still another hundred pages.

This author writes great suspense because she understands something that I wish Hollywood movie makers did: suspense can't be done for its own sake. The best written suspense scene is useless without emotional connections (between characters and reader and characters and each other) to sharpen it and give it depth.

Having said that, I'm interested in how she played Gina, a main character, as having worked through her trauma and gotten over it for the most part. I think that was perhaps an unconventional way to do it, but I think its almost a little too easy for the character. Because really, who endures a brutal rape at the hand of terrorists and a few years later has no sexual hangups whatsoever? Probably not so many people.