A psychological thriller that will leave you aghast, Hunting Helena is a chilling debut novel written by Newfoundland and Labrador author Natalie Carter-Giles. Already hardened by a lifetime of grief, Helena Douglas is a young university student attempting to start life over when the unthinkable happens. While jogging along a coastal trail she is captured by a deeply disturbed man. For three months, two weeks and five days Helena is held captive in a dark basement. With only a dirty mattress and meager offerings of food and water, Helena becomes the object of her abductors affection, enduring daily physical and mental torture, satisfying her captors sick obsessive desires and penchant for violence. Fighting against all odds, Helena finds strength from within and manages to escape the clutches of his derangement. In the following years, Helena works hard to recover and slowly puts her life back together to some semblance of normalcy but, in the back of her mind, she is constantly aware that her captor is still out there, lurking in the shadows, walking the streets. When Deer Lake college student, Melody Scott's body is found in a drainage ditch eight years after Helena's rescue, Helena resolves to stop this crazed madman in his tracks. She partners with Sergeant David Campbell and follows the clues back to her hometown where memories of happier times, moments of despair and episodes of nightmarish terror come flooding back. In this process of rediscovery she begins to see many things in a new light including the motivation of her one-time best friend and a childhood bargain she made with God.
I have often said that fear is many things. It takes pieces of you that you may never get back. It makes you lose control and can stop you in your tracks. But what I didn't say is that fear can change you in ways you wouldn't think possible. It can take your ability to trust, to love, and to live, but sometimes fear changes who you are. It takes your very being and morphs it into someone or something you don't even recognize. Fear can transform you into someone you despise, and make you loathe the person who you have become. And sometimes, when the fear is just too unbearable, it turns you into the monster from which you are trying to escape. Not all of us survive fear - not all of us want to. And some of us wish we hadn't.
Hunting Helena ~ A Novel is a chilling psychological whodunit with frequent twists and turns. At the outset, the Prologue sets the stage for a page turning, fast paced story. Readers will be instantly sucked in to the gripping story of Helena's reality as she lies "in the corner on the damp and dirty floor unable to wipe away" the blood splattered on her face. Natalie Carter-Giles doesn't just lay out the facts and tell the story. She cleverly weaves the brutality of the crime and the life story of the main character using a flashback technique. As the story unfolds, the reader is constantly learning new information; information about Helena's early life, her time in captivity and recovery, and of course the present day detective story that is about to unfold. The audience will experience heightened feelings of anticipation and anxiety and will prompt thrill seekers to consider the darkness that exists within humanity.
Natalie Carter-Giles writing is very well done, adding just enough description to invoke an empathetic response from readers as well as gut wrenching shock. I did find some parts of this story to be very disturbing making it a true psychological thriller, I guess. However it is important for readers to know that some of the scenes of violence and brutality could be triggering. I particularly enjoyed how the author cleverly constructs each chapter to end with a "what if" question creating a well organized story that kept me thinking about the current plot and wondering what was about to happen.
Congratulations to Natalie Carter-Giles on her first publication, Hunting Helena ~ A Novel ! If you are in the market for frequent twists and turns, unending suspense, and a chilling story this is the book for you!! Hunting Helena ~ A Novel is a Flanker Press publication.
