The Passenger by Lisa Lutz|Book Review|

Hey Booklovers!

I stumbled upon this book as I was searching for reading something different in thriller. As much as I love reading it, I have come to see a pattern in these psychological thriller and I just had to read something that wasn’t so formulaic. So the blurb of The Passenger looked good and here’s my take on it.

Tanya Dubois is on run after she finds her husband dead at the foot of the stairs in her home. She makes it pretty clear that she didn’t do it. But she has even a darker past to hide to not get involved in her husbands death and so decided to run. Again. She calls someone from her past to help her get a new identity – Amelia Keen and decided to stay off the grid as long as she can. She befriends a bartender Blue, has a brief fling with a Sheriff while facing obstacles after obstacles that come her way making her change identities like we change cloths. So what is she running away from? And how long can she run for?

The Passenger, told through Tanya’s eyes, is in many ways a study of the psychological trauma such isolated living causes a person. This mysterious past and the glimpses into its darkness heighten your sympathy for this girl as she loses herself one piece at a time. Everywhere she goes, danger awaits. It appears that Tanya is struggling with problems that began amid the passions and confusions of high school. If she is to find salvation she must stop fleeing her past and confront it. Or would that path lead to prison? There is something about her struggle which I found genuine and which allows you to brush aside any doubts as to the veracity of the story through her eyes. It would be very easy to dismiss The Passenger as nothing more than another suspense story with a potentially unreliable narrator because superficially that is exactly what it is. However, it is the psychological toll of such constant suspense and danger that occurs within Tanya is the true meat of the story alongside the morality questions raised by Tanya and her entire situation which makes it different from others.

|Goodreads|

Pros: Suspense, Writing, plotline

Cons: Pace, subplots that lead nowhere

Bibliogyan Verdict: A compelling action-thriller but can get monotonous