Review: Ruthless by Carolyn Lee Adams

Summary:

Ruth Carver has always competed like her life depends on it. Ambitious. Tough. Maybe even mean. It’s no wonder people call her ruthless.

When she wakes up with a concussion in the bed of a moving pickup truck, Ruth realizes she has been entered into a contest she can’t afford to lose.

At a remote, rotting cabin deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ruth’s blindfold comes off and she finds herself face-to-face with her captor: A man who believes his mission is to punish bad girls like Ruth. A man who has done this six times before.

The other girls were never heard from again, but Ruth won’t go down easy. She escapes into the wilderness, but her hunter is close at her heels. That’s when the real battle begins. That’s when Ruth must decides just how far she’ll go in order to survive.

Back home, they called her Ruthless. They had no idea just how right they were.

Publication Date: July 14, 2015

Ruthless was a great atmospheric thriller about a teen girl’s struggle to survive against a serial killer. This book was definitely a read in one sitting kind of novel. There was so much tension as Ruth tried to escape her captor while he always seemed to be one step ahead of her.

Ruth was an imperfect character and I think that quality made her relatable. She hasn’t always been the nicest person and her aggressiveness has unfortunately led her to become a target of a deranged serial killer named “Wolfman.” The book opens with a bang as Ruth wakes up disoriented in the bed of a pickup truck. In flashback scenes, readers are given a better sense of what Ruth was like before her abduction and how her captivity changes her.

The present scenes are full of suspense and action as Ruth fights off Wolfman and runs into the woods in a dramatic escape attempt. Her struggles were truly heart wrenching, particularly the scenes where salvation seemed just out of her reach. The Wolfman’s flashback scenes aided in making his character more fleshed out. As far as Ruth’s flashbacks, I wished the author focused on more than one particular time in her life to give more insight into how she became so driven.

Fans of fast-paced YA thrillers will love Ruthless. I wasn’t sure a cat and mouse game in the woods would hold my interest, but the author threw in enough twists to keep me glued to the pages.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of the novel for review!