No, you haven't time warped back to English Lit class in college or worse, high school. This Kidnapped is nothing like the Robert Louis Stephenson classic by the same name.

Elizabeth “Liz” Cromwell has lived a privileged life, as the daughter of screen legend, Jonathan Cromwell. What she hasn't experience is any kind of love. Not from her socialite mother or her larger than life father. After much soul-searching, she decides what she wants is to mean something to someone, and she begins finding fulfillment working as a volunteer in the children's ward at a hospital.

Her wild, overexposed past spent trying to garner daddy's attention has come back to haunt her, when she is kidnapped. Shocked, terrified and pushed into fight or flight, she looks for any opportunity to escape, or barring that, knee and knock her kidnappers senseless.

The last thing she expects is to be rescued by one of her own assailants. Confused, she wonders at the tender emotions and quicksilver flashes of heat Mac generates. Are her feelings toward her captor merely a case of Stockholm Syndrome or something else entirely?

Kidnapped tries so hard to be a real suspense thriller, I could feel the growing pains. Unfortunately it falls short of the mark. The beginning pace is interrupted by needless info-dumps. The established anti-hero/kidnapper, who is not “anti” at all–he's simply a bit slow and kind of stupid–although I grant you he's pretty hot eye candy. The plot-points plod, there's the cliffhanger that wasn't, since the author telegraphed it in almost from the start–and finally, the epilogue that left me scratching my head. It's a HEA, but I doubt I would have had the patience to wait as long as the heroine did.

The premise behind Kidnapped was ripe for a fresh spin. Or a cheeky nod from the past. It received neither. And although I wouldn't classify this as a bad book, it had too many problems to qualify anywhere near keeper status.

3 Kisses

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