I find that thriller/mysteries are great for train rides because they are fairly quick to read and entertaining. Taken has been on my TBR list for quite a while and since I had a long train ride back to Nice, I thought this was a good book to kill time with!

Taken starts with an accidental abduction. Jessica, a young mother and dance teacher, has been kidnapped. The intended target was probably her roommate, who is the mistress of a (maybe former, maybe current) mob boss and who lent Jessica her car. Max, the detective on the case, is determined to find Jessica. As he investigates, one question pops up: was it true that everyone loves Jessica?

As expected, this was a very fast-paced and twisty mystery. I’m not going to talk too much about the plot in case I give away a spoiler, but I did think it was pretty interesting how Jessica’s parents, despite her father being an ex-cop, tried to use social media to find their daughter and make contact with the kidnappers. And the book actually acknowledges that the ones who get media attention are the pretty girls that are missing – a description that fits Jessica. I expected this to have a bit more impact on the story, given the hashtag in the title, but it didn’t seem to impede investigation that much. However, the actual investigation was already full of twists and turns, so I didn’t really mind that the social media stuff wasn’t as important as I expected.

As for characters, I thought that Max was a pretty sympathetic character! I liked reading more about his personal life and how he’s raising his daughter and trying to co-parent with his ex-wife. That said, there was one part of the book where I thought Max pretty much bent the law in half and it seemed so incongruous with his otherwise good cop image that I was thrown for a while. It was somewhat related to the main mystery, but I did not like it – Max wasn’t really written as a morally grey character so this action felt a little out of place.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this! It’s a quick, fun read and the ending took me by surprise while being pretty believable. If you’re looking for a mystery-thriller type of book, this is one that you may enjoy.

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