Tess Raynes’s GONE MIA—DEADLY DECEPTION shares a key quality with its villain: once it’s captured you, it won’t let you go. The psychological thriller begins with a situation at once funny and dangerous. Mia Agostini is a brilliant statistician and researcher, a clue that’s provided in the book’s first sentence: “According to the data, Mia’s 2020 Toyota Camry should be the safest sedan she could have chosen.”
Mia is trying to change a flat tire off the shoulder of a highway. Her best friend is on the phone dictating to her from a how-to article: “‘You have to make sure you find the right spot, or the vehicle could slide off the jack and crush you.’” The two argue about whether or not Mia should wait out the five hours before a tow truck can arrive on this very hot day, Mia saying “I’ll die of dehydration before they find me” and the other saying “You’re so dramatic. But also, I don’t want you to die of dehydration. Or, like a cartoon character, get crushed under your car.”
Handsome Alex—a mechanic, no less—shows up offering help. Within the first few pages, GONE MIA has revealed Mia’s strength, intelligence, general location, best friend’s physical distance, and close relationship with her parents. A potential romance has been introduced, as well as a potential conflict: How has Mia’s new car already had a tire go flat?
Ominous clues about Alex begin to drop, and it quickly becomes apparent that all is not right. Raynes deftly inserts classic abusive-boyfriend behaviors: dictating Mia’s clothing choices, isolating her from her loved ones, and sabotaging her career and reputation. In this novel, the reader will identify the villain quickly. The mystery is in how Mia escapes him.
Mia employs ingenious tactics that exploit her strengths with numbers, including a scene in a casino when, on the run and dead broke, she generates income at the blackjack table. She also plays on common stereotypes held by men in general and Alex in particular, at one frightening but funny point invoking a very personal and routine bodily function to escape Alex’s clutches.
In addition, GONE MIA offers a moving second storyline about her relationship with her father and dementia-ridden mother. There are also unexpected twists in Alex’s backstory, along with episodes in which women Mia encounters in her flights either assist her or ignore her.
Mia’s sustained ignorance of Alex’s deception significantly weakens the story. Readers will see the dangers long before she does, especially after the arrival of Alex’s mother—who reacts in most unmaternal ways to Mia’s physical and emotional symptoms. Raynes offers some plausible rationale (particularly given the real-world frequency of entrapments on vulnerable women by predatory men), but her reasons pale next to the extremities of the abuse.
Credibility issues notwithstanding, the novel’s engaging characters and roller-coaster ride are irrepressible. In the end, the fun in this addictive read is in watching Mia bravely and cleverly engineer her own escape.
Tess Raynes’s psychological thriller GONE MIA—DEADLY DECEPTION grabs readers by the throat and doesn’t let go until the closing pages.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader