Nothing ever happens in the town of Long Thorpe – that is, until sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson disappears without a trace. No family or police investigation can track her down. Spending months inside the cellar of her kidnapper with several other girls, Summer learns of Colin’s abusive past, and his thoughts of his victims being his family…his perfect, pure flowers. But flowers can’t survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out…

The Cellar has been on my radar for a while, since one of my coworkers told me about it. She let me borrow her copy and I finally got around to reading it. It was one of those books that kept me interested, wanting to know what happened next, but in a calm sort of way rather than on the edge of my seat.

The story is told in three points of view – Summer, Lewis, and Clover/Colin – the kidnapped, the boyfriend, and the kidnapper, respectfully. It was interesting to see the different perspectives, especially Clover’s because you see how disturbed he really is. I mean, I’m still trying to understand his thought process in kidnapping four girls, naming them after flowers, and keeping them as his “perfect family.” I mean, I understood his thought process on some things, but others, again, are still a mystery to me. I was glad though that Preston includes his point of view in the book. Overall, just having three different perspectives gave the story a more complete feeling since the reader is aware of what’s happening outside of the cellar as well.

The main thing this book lacked was character descriptions. While I don’t like it to be overdone, I wasn’t really able to picture a lot of the characters other than Summer and (kind of) Clover. I do know that some physical traits of the other characters were mentioned, but there was something about it that just didn’t sink into my brain to be able to conjure up a picture of these people. I had just generic pictures of them, but nothing that stood out.

Overall, the story was good. It kept me hooked and the life the girls had while trapped in the cellar felt like a thriller story. You could see how life down there affected them all, and I was satisfied with the realistic outcome of how the experience affected them afterward. Though I was a little disappointed with Clover’s ending in it all because I was expecting a different outcome for him. In any case, I though this was a great story and I’ll definitely be reading more of Natasha Preston’s books!

Rating: 4/5 stars