Double Review: Runaway & Captured

'' The real question was: Could I trust him? ''

 ★★☆☆☆ 

They witness something they are not supposed to and end up running away from their seemingly perfect lives. Hallie Romano and Jackson Carmine live in the spotlight their fathers' company's money has created. Then one night, it all changes. They run away after witnessing a murder after a family dinner in a restaurant. With Jackson in the lead, they escape from New York City just to keep running. Neither of them wants to go back, especially Jackson since he knows that neither of their parents has entirely clean hands when it comes to business. What follows is a paranoid long vacation over two continents.

Runaway and Captured are both relatively short books so you could consider them being a one longer book based on the seamless transition between the two volumes. And even though they could be just one book, I think the author has made a great decision by keeping the stories separate since the characters have different agendas in both books.

Hallie might be the one character that I haven't learned to like in the span of the book (or two). From the beginning, she is hysterical and melodramatic, and though her character grows a bit during the books, she still overexaggerates everything until the very end. She is very dependable on the people around her and more often than not when the situation becomes taxiing she just shuts the world out. Another thing very typical for Hallie's character was the contradiction between her sayings and her actions. She said she wanted a humble life, not an extravagant lifestyle, and the next sentence she is complaining out loud about the thread count of the sheets. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand her. I have to give the props to the author for being able to portray the perfect example of the spoiled rich kid who has to face the real world.

In the first book, we don't get to learn much about Jackson. Chapters in his point of view are a bit more frequent in Captured. In Runaway the author hasn't found a voice for Jackson, suddenly he isn't the character what you've seen from the outside. He isn't the reliable, charming, thoughtful person he is painted out to be. The first few chapters told by him, I have to be honest here, are bad. They're like reading the thoughts of horny thirteen-year-old who doesn't know what an adjective is. Fortunately, it gets a bit better later on.

The best part of both of the books is the amount of action. The pair of them are running, there are people chasing them, they need to get away or otherwise they might end up being killed. The way the suspension is kept until the end is great. It didn't matter much, that both of the books ended with a huge cliche, it could be expected at that point.

These books are a bit better suited for those who like to enjoy the superficial aspects of a story. I, myself, always try puzzle out the motives of the characters, so these two didn't give me much to chew on.