~REVIEW of Megan Hart's PRECIOUS AND FRAGILE THINGS~




HART LEAVES THE EROTICA BEHIND IN A DARK AND INTRICATE KIDNAPPING TALE

   Star read

 Opening Line: "This was the life she'd made."

I am rapidly reaching the point with Megan Hart that if she were to write a phone book I’m pretty sure I would read it because she’s just that good at making words beautiful. She also manages to put those words into exactly the emotions and private thoughts I assumed I was alone in having while weaving and layering together an achingly thoughtful story. And here with Precious And Fragile Things I’ve learned that she can hold my attention without the erotica too. Because this was so not erotic, it wasn’t even in any way a romance, in fact it was kind of disturbing. Yet in the end I would have to say that it was also amazing, because its lingered with me for days now.

I’ve never read anything like this before, (which I seem to say with each of Hart’s books) 99% of this takes place within a secluded, snowed in, mountain cabin and its here within those 4 walls, in a simple character study that we watch two very different yet equally damaged souls bounce off each other. By all rights this should have been boring and tedious read yet because of Hart’s gifts as a writer I was left utterly entranced.

Gilly Solomon is exhausted. Mentally and physically burnt out from the endless cycle of looking after her house, her husband, and her two young children. All she dreams about is a couple of hour’s peace, a break from the constant crying children, menial tasks, and endless demands to her time, someone to look after her for a change. Gilly’s at a breaking point the night a man jumps into her Suburban, holds a knife to her throat and tells her to drive. She isn’t thinking clearly when she manages to get the children out and she’s definitely lost it when they stop for gas and Gilly doesn’t run….

Now she’s stranded in a remote cabin with a dangerous knife wielding stranger who can’t release her because he fears going back to prison and she’s only got herself to blame. Time however forges a bond of sorts between the captor and the captive and as the snow piles up around them and the days turn into months she learns that her kidnapper -Todd is not the lunatic she first believed. He’s but a man shaped by his horrific past much in the same way Gilly is.

The tension throughout this is palpable by the end though the suspense was killing me because I had absolutely no idea how this was going to play out, and I knew there couldn’t really be any kind of conventional HEA. All I will say about “that” is I was VERY surprised by what did happen and my only disappointment in this book lies here as well, as I would have liked more details on the …afterwards.
Cheers people.