The Taking of Annie Thorne by C J Tudor (Audible)

This is C J Tudor’s second stand alone novel. I haven’t been reading her books in any order, but if I compare her first novel, The Chalk Man, to her fifth, The Drift, I can see the growth in her as a writer. I thought The Drift was an exceptionally well told tale. This, her, second book was on a 2-4-1 deal on Audible. Personally, I think Richard Armitage has a wonderful voice for narrating books and he can bring a dull book to life. As I was now familiar with the authors work, and knew I would enjoy the narration, I thought I would see how this early book stood up to her later works.

 

“Then . . . 

One night, Annie went missing. Disappeared from her own bed. There were searches, appeals. Everyone thought the worst. And then, miraculously, after forty-eight hours, she came back. But she couldn't, or wouldn't, say what had happened to her. 
 
Something happened to my sister. I can't explain what. I just know that when she came back, she wasn't the same. She wasn't my Annie. 
 
I didn't want to admit, even to myself, that sometimes I was scared to death of my own little sister. 
 
Now. . . 
 
The email arrived in my inbox two months ago. I almost deleted it straight away, but then I clicked OPEN: 
 
I know what happened to your sister. It's happening again . . .” 

 

The Taking of Annie Thorne is a dark and disturbing thriller in which the plot takes place in both the present and twenty-five years earlier, via a series of flashbacks taking the reader to a specific night in young Annie Thorne’s life. In a bid to ramp up the tension, C.J Tudor has tried to give this book a supernatural edge to increase the atmosphere and the fear of the unknown.

 

Throughout the tale, Joe Thorne, Annies elder brother, is our unreliable narrator. He receives an anonymous email telling him that the same thing that happened to his sister is starting to happen again. Shaken by this message, Joe returns home to Arnhill to take on a teaching position at his former school. He is a gambler and alcoholic, and he hopes if he moves back home, he can find out what happened in his past and escape from his current problems. What he doesn’t realise is that you can’t escape your addictions, when you owe people money, they’ll track you down to recoup it.

 

Whilst I didn’t dislike this book, and I do think her later work shows C J Tudor is a talented writer, I found this novel had too many similarities to her first outing in The Chalk Man. I felt like I had already read this book before, a deeply flawed protagonist, a return to a depressing hometown, sinister childhood friends, the supernatural…the story didn’t feel particularly unique.

The book starts very slowly, as Joe, our deeply flawed protagonist, moves back to his childhood hometown where he is met with a mixed reception. As well as his addictions, Joe has a mouth on him; he thinks he is making edgy comments, but he cannot seem to understand the difference between when is a good time to speak up, and when to just shut up. His sarcasm and arrogance, mixed with his inability to know when to stop drinking, makes him a hard character to warm to. I didn’t know if I wanted to be in his corner or not. He experienced a hard childhood, but we can’t be clear about how events really unfolded, we only have his word, and his word is as unreliable as his actions.

 

Joe has obviously returned to the old mining village of Arnhill with an agenda. He needs money to cover his gambling debts, and what better way to get money than try extortion. Joe blames his ex-school friend Stephen Hurst for the death of Annie, and following receipt of that strange email, now is Joe’s chance to extort Stephen and make him pay for his past.

 

Arnhill is a place with as many issues as Joe. He has managed to con his way into a job as an English teacher at his former school which is now a failing Academy. To be fair, I wasn’t surprised at the school’s failings since most of the time Joe was in the pub getting drunk instead of in class teaching! The school also has a problem with bullying, a problem that seems to span the past and present. As a child, Joe was part of Stephen Hurst’s gang; far better to be in the gang than to be the one being bullied. Now Joe is a teacher, he is witnessing the same brutality being dished out by Stephen’s son to fellow classmates. Joe cannot forgive Stephen Hurst for the past. He blames Stephen for what happened to Annie, and if it wasn’t for Stephen, his childhood infatuation with Marie Gibson could have blossomed into something special.

 

Stephen is now a powerful and wealthy man, and as a school governor he has made his feelings clear about Joe’s unexpected return to Arnhill. He will do anything within his control to ensure that Joe’s teaching post is revoked, but whilst most of the community is hostile towards Joe’s return, he does find support in art teacher Beth Scattergood. She tries to help Joe as he faces his past, one that is plagued by vivid nightmares which start to shed a light on what happened to his eight-year-old sister Annie, and the evil that has cursed the town of Arnhill for so many years.

 

I think my biggest issue with this book is that I wasn’t sure what I was reading. I thought from the title of the book that Annie Thorne had been kidnapped, and that the story would focus on Annie, but this is the second book I’ve read this year where the title and the story is misleading. This is not about the abduction of Annie Thorne (and for the USA market the title was changed to The Hiding Place, which isn’t a great title, but is at least a little less confusing) instead, this book reads as a bit of a supernatural ghost story, mixed with a trying to escape the mob theme, with a sprinkling of revenge for having endured a traumatic childhood.

 

I wonder, if someone else had narrated this book, would I have given up on it?

 

I thought there was the making of an excellent book hidden between the pages, but it was a bit confused, and some elements could have been removed to make a sharper and slicker storyline. I found myself a bit lost with Joes gambling past catching up with him; I don’t think it added to the story, instead I would have preferred to know more about the past, about Annie Thorne. I loved her one-eyed doll, Abbie Eyes, it gave the story that disturbing horror element that makes you feel a bit creeped out. It was an element that could have been worked into the story to keep that supernatural vibe more focused. The abandoned mines, with beetles skittering around in the dark, again, another creepy horror element that makes you feel uneasy but needing to know more. These were the elements that made me want to read the book. I didn’t want to read about Joe owing money and getting beaten up, it was an unnecessary distraction and I think it was used as a crutch to try to explain why Joe wanted to blackmail Stephen.

 

A few tweaks and a clearer direction in the tale would have made this a great book instead of a mediocre tale.

  

Genre: Fiction, Psychological, Thriller, Suspense, Supernatural 

Release Date: 21^st February 2019 

Publisher: Penguin Audio 

Listening Time: 10h 43m 

 

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