Bookreporter.com - STANDING STILL by Kelly Simmons

STANDING STILL
Kelly Simmons
Atria Books
Psychological Suspense
ISBN: 9780743289726

The worst many of us can imagine often involves captivity and torture, kidnapping and murder. There are, however, subtler but no less devastating personal disasters. What if we were to find out that our spouse is not who they say they are? Perhaps we live in fear that our own dark secrets are going to be revealed. Maybe we discover that we find a comfort or emotional freedom in bondage.

Kelly Simmons’s dark and exciting novel, STANDING STILL, explores the emotional tensions in a kidnapping that is far more complicated than it appears on the surface. In fact, for the woman at the center of the story, the actual abduction is the least of her worries.

Claire Cooper, prone to debilitating panic attacks and troubled by a litany of real and imagined dangers, is often left alone in her sprawling dream house with her three young daughters. Her charismatic husband Sam is away on business more than he is at home. One night her deepest fears are realized when Claire finds an intruder standing over her sleeping daughter. “Take me,” she begs the kidnapper. And he does. She is dragged in her nightgown and taken away in his car. For the next six days Claire is bound and kept in a motel room, while her captor and his mysterious and unseen boss negotiate with Sam for her release.

Interestingly enough, a bond develops between Claire and her kidnapper, who is surprisingly sensitive and even caring. He turns out to be a widower whose loss is related to Sam's work, and what he reveals makes Claire rethink the man to whom she is married. She also begins to examine her reliance on drugs like Xanax and her relationship with her children. Readers will have much to contemplate as well: Did she go willingly with the unnamed kidnapper? Why, later, does she have such a hard time paring from him?

Simmons’s prose is graceful yet straightforward, and Claire is a compelling character. STANDING STILL raises a number of very intriguing questions about motherhood, marriage, ethics and mental health. But Simmons fails to fully delve into these topics that the story suggests are important. Instead she touches evenly, if a bit lightly, on all of them, resulting in a good but ultimately uncommitted novel.

Readers surely will be fascinated as Claire's story, both that of her present trial and former trauma, unfolds. STANDING STILL plays with the idea of worst fears come true and explores how perhaps what we fear most is not the worst that can happen to us.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.