I received a free copy of this book, and I read it as part of the judging effort for the SFINCS3 novella competition. I’m part of Team TBR, but these thoughts are my own and do not reflect the final rating of the team.
Mistaken Captives
by Rhiannon Held
The entire plot of this story can be summed up by its title. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but it really is a story about someone who gets kidnapped by accident. The men who grab Faith, our main character, thinks she’s someone else entirely, and for her to have a chance of survival, she must maintain the illusion that she is who they think she is.
See, in addition to being kidnapped, Faith has another problem. Everyone else involved is a werewolf. Her kidnappers think Faith is already in the know about the existence of werewolves, and that’s part of why she’s taken. If it turns out they got some regular ordinary human, who doesn’t know about the supernatural, the most expedient way of dealing with that is to kill said human.
Naturally, Faith has no interest in getting killed, so she fakes it for all she’s worth. On her own, she might not have made it, but the kidnappers also grabbed a werewolf named Laurence at the same time they took Faith. She learns what she needs from him, and together, they plot their escape.
What I’ll whine about
The escape. Faith and Laurence spend most of the book figuring out how to escape captivity, but the way they finally do it felt rather underwhelming.
The romance. There are a few hints that Faith finds Laurence attractive, but I didn’t feel the heat of a budding romance or sexual attraction between them. Apparently it’s there, though, so maybe I’m just bad at picking up on these things.
I’m not normally a fan of prequel novellas, but this is more of a tie-in – something to get readers curious about a main series. After looking through the descriptions of the books in the Silver series I suspect that Faith’s and Laurence’s story plays out somewhere toward the end of that, so calling it a prequel would be incorrect. Regardless, it’s clear that this is a tie in, and I’m a little disappointed that Faith doesn’t seem to be a part of the main series. She’s an intriguing character, and I’d like to read more about her.
What I’ll gush about
I feel like the idea/premise of the story works really well for introducing a mundane, unsuspecting human to the existence of the supernatural. A series of unfortunate coincidences lead to poor Faith finding herself looked up in a basement with a werewolf.
I also like what the author does with Faith’s knowledge of werewolves at the end of the book. It’s not what I expected, and it absolutely has me wondering how things might turn out for Faith down the line. The book is an easy and enjoyable read, and on the whole, the positives outweigh the details I whine about.
Final Words…
Mistaken Captives is a promising introduction to a longer running series that promises a lot of werewolf action and intrigue.
