Review: Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy by Charlton Pettus

☆☆☆
Fiction — Thriller

This wasn’t bad but could have been a lot better. My biggest issue was the weak characters. Jordan and Stephanie Parrish are the two heroes of the story yet neither has a personality. They are incredibly generic and therefore impossible to connect with. I don’t know why they care about each other; I don’t get a sense of motivation from them.

The bad guys don’t have much personality, either. Our main villain engages in sexual and animal torture. I guess this is to show how bad he really is, but there’s no point to this behavior other than to compensate for a lack of personality. His motives are never explained.

The plot relies on the bad guys making some big mistakes and the good guys making just a few little ones. I get annoyed when either side is perfect, but it should be more balanced. I really enjoyed the chase/escape scenes.

There is a lot of jumping around. A scene will be a paragraph and then jump to another POV for another paragraph. (There are 88 chapters plus an epilogue and prologue in 406 pages.) Sometimes these are flashbacks, so at times I didn’t know who or when or where I was. And who the heck is Natalie??

Some plot threads didn’t seem to wrap up. What did the end mean, “folding”? Jordan and Stephanie were supposed to have a strained marriage at the beginning. Then they’re perfectly happy together. No talking it out? No counseling? I still have a few questions about Alex and Sam. Maybe I’m just dense.



The writing is fine but utilitarian — no thoughtful prose or literary qualities; just the straight facts. The writer also doesn’t know what bemused means. (Hint: not amused ) But I think any true thriller fan will enjoy this.

Content Warning:
Consistent strong language that just felt gratuitous
Explicit sexual content, including abuse and torture
Some gory medical details and graphic violence
Deliberate harm to animals