Paradise Prison by Faith Mortimer - Review

Today I am giving my review of Paradise Prison by Faith Mortimer. I originally received this book in December 2016 directly from Faith in exchange for an honest review in time for the books publication date. It's taken me five months, but I finally feel able to put my thoughts down about this book. Faith has been lovely and understanding about my reasons for this delay, so please read on so I can explain. 

Paradise Prison

During a huge row, Gillian stands up to her abusive boyfriend. The consequences are horrendous and far-reaching.
Terrified, she flees her home, seeking anonymity abroad while coming to terms with the outcome of her actions.
In Portugal, Gillian meets Harry, a yachtsman, needing crew for his Atlantic Ocean-crossing. She applies for the job. Half-way into the journey, after confessing to her crime, Harry offers her refuge on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean which he says he owns.
Confused and depressed, Gillian imagines this is the answer to her problems. She needs time to lie low and consider her options; confront the authorities or live in obscurity? Harry is offering the perfect hiding place…or is he?
When things start going horribly wrong, she asks herself if she is alone on the island. But maybe the biggest question of all is why she gets the gut feeling Harry wants to keep her there at all costs?
What happens when she says … no?

My Review

Paradise Prison is the fourth book in the Dark Minds series by Faith Mortimer, which is a collection of stand alone novels. I hadn't read any of her other books but this sounded really interesting and I jumped at the chance to read and review it. 

The story kicks off immediately and I was sucked into what was happening and I really felt for Gillian, what she was having to deal with was horrendous and she ended up in a situation that wasn't her fault but she had to face the consequences. 

Gillian goes through both the fight and flight instinct in her situation. but ends up sticking with the flight option to deal with the aftermath. She escapes her life but ends up in a situation far worse than she would have done had she remained to face the music. 

Though I felt for Gillian, I don't think she is a particularly likeable character, but I'm not sure that she's supposed to be. Harry is also an unlikable character and he becomes worse and worse as the story goes on as you can imagine. Even though they were unlikable it didn't affect my reading enjoyment and I still wanted to know what happened. 

When we get to the island the story does become a bit repetitive, but this is important to the story and it helps build the monotony of life there and the feeling of isolation that Gillian feels. I also got a weird feeling of both freedom and claustrophobia which grew the longer Gillian is there. 

The story is really well written and it was something different than anything I have ever read in a thriller. 

Now this is the bit that's difficult to write for me, there's some things that happen later in the book (which I won't spoil obviously) that triggered an anxiety episode and I had to keep reading, but not in an enjoyable way, in a panicked way to find out what happened. I have never had this happen before while reading a book and I didn't know myself that this would happen to me. This isn't the fault of the author as giving any information about this bit of the book would be a spoiler and would ruin some of the suspense and tension. With this happening I didn't feel I could give an honest review as my irrational brain was just saying give it one star. This would not have been representative of how good the book actually is and would have just been a knee jerk response due to my own personal feelings. So I put three stars down as a compromise. I have tried to write this review countless times since, but have not managed until today. Now that I have been able to distance myself from my response and thought about the book and the story I have decided that a true rating is four stars and I will be amending Goodreads to reflect this. 

So yes I would recommend this book, I'm just sorry it's taken so long for me to be able to share my review with everyone.  

About The Author 

Faith Mortimer was born in Manchester and educated in Singapore, Malaya and Hampshire, England. A Registered nurse,then changed careers to oversee a number of travel and sport related companies. Faith is happily married and has two children. She lives in the south of England and so far, has written three series of books which are also, all standalone novels.