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Check It Out: No Exit by Taylor Adams

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today I would like to recommend the quickly paced 2019 thriller, No Exit by Taylor Adams. 

Darby Thorne is a college student trying desperately to make it to Utah to reconnect with her estranged mother who is in the hospital. On the way there, she is caught in a terrible blizzard in the Colorado mountains and is forced to take shelter in a remote rest stop with four strangers. There are Sandi and Eddie, middle aged cousins heading to Denver for Christmas; Ashley, an outgoing and handsome young man who is trying his best to be sociable and funny; and then there's Lars, a rodent-faced mouth-breather who gives Darby the creeps. 

Along with the storm making it impossible to travel, it is also disrupting any cell phone reception. Darby tried everything she can to get a bar, and goes outside in a failed attempt to get a signal.  As she walks around in the snow, she happens to glance in the back of a van that is parked in the parking lot. There she is shocked when she happens to see through the window of the van and sees a hand of a young girl reaching through the bars of a dog cage.  Darby must quickly find a course of action, figure out which of the four rest stop strangers the van belongs to and which of the strangers she can trust. She soon realizes that it is up to her to save the little girl, and also save her own skin.

Darby is a terrific character. She is by no means a natural hero, she is complex and very flawed and not always looking to do the right thing. However, she does act heroically and is determined to fight the odds and save the little girl's life. 

Contact the Sioux City Public Library to get your copy of No Exit by Taylor Adams, or talk to one of our librarians to get more ideas of books that have a real movie vibe. 

Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.