Sara's Game: An absolutely addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist (The Sara Winthrop Thriller Series Book 1)

I received a copy of **Sara's Game** by *Ernie Lindsey* from NoiseTrade.com for which I "tipped the author".Up until two years ago Sara had a very good life. Then, without any warning, her husband, Brian, vanished from the face of the earth. An extensive search was performed, but no reason for his disappearance ever surfaced. He was simply gone.He left behind a wife, Sara, and 3 young children, 2 girls and a boy. After two years, Sara managed to put together a life for the children and her, but it is not easy raising three young children by herself and holding down a full time job. However, Sara is nothing if not resourceful. She works in marketing for a company called Lite Pulse which makes computer games. She is very good at her job and has worked her way up in the company at a pretty rapid pace. Of course there are times when she misses her husband and feels frustrated that he has never been found. There are also times she resents his not being there to help with family responsibilities. But over all, Sara has managed to accept what she cannot change and in that frame of mind, she balances her job and her family obligations very well.That is, until the day that started off like any other day when Sara got to work and received a phone call from her son's school. The children had been playing hide-and-seek, and when they had finished the game, Jacob, Sara's son, was nowhere to be found. No one wanted to panic just yet. It had happened once before when Sara and the children were playing this game at home, and when everyone was ready to stop, Jacob couldn't be found. He had discovered a great hiding place and fell asleep waiting for someone to notice him. He finally turned up when one of his sisters stepped on him. Sara wanted to believe this current incident was just history repeating itself. Until her daughters' school called to say that both her girls were missing. The class had gone to an ice cream shop to celebrate the end of school, but when attendance was taken before returning to the school, neither of the girls was there. Sara immediately left work to go to the schools to straighten all of this out. When she got to her car, she found a note on her windshield that said, "Are You Ready To Play The Game?" This was how Sara was led to the conclusion that her children, all three of them, had been kidnapped.From that point on, whoever was responsible for abducting the children leads Sara on an exhausting and frustrating journey with clues she has to solve and orders she has to follow if she ever wants to see her children alive again. The first task is designed to humiliate Sara as much as possible. It was hard to imagine what Sara had to be thinking and feeling as she was forced to decide whether she would allow herself to be humiliated in that fashion, and from that point on, the tension builds. It is obvious that the goal of the person who has Sara's children is to punish her severely for something she has done in the past. There is one very obvious person who could be the one behind this scheme, but realistically, it's a stretch to think that this person would go to such lengths and harbor such extreme hatred for Sarah to hatch a plan like this one. However, both Sara and the police detectives on the case agree that the one person they have in mind must be the culprit.From the time Sara becomes aware her children are missing, the action on this story never lets up; in fact, it only intensifies with each additional chapter or revelation. Lindsey has written a very tense, believable story about testing a woman's endurance and her love for her children far beyond what any mother expects to encounter in raising her children. Fortunately for readers who enjoyed reading about Sara and her family, Lindsey has written two more books featuring these people. I immediately bought both of them. I look forward to reading more from Lindsey in the future. He certainly has a gift for keeping readers on the edge of our seats and delivering first rate storytelling.

I came across this through one of those sites that let you know when books are free, or on sale, this one was called BookBub. With the main character being a female game developer for a high profile company, and the whole issue with this stupid #gamergate tantrums happening, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at it.While Ernie Lindsey is no stranger to writing great thrillers, I didn’t feel that connection or sense of urgency in this one. The main villain I figured out from the first couple chapters, and in knowing who the villain was, it seemed that the author tried awfully hard to get you to think that another character was the one. He set up the book so that if that particular character was the antagonist, well, he kept saying it was, but if it wasn’t, well, of course not. It made the reveal very so so.The secondary characters were just not fleshed out enough with the exception of Teddy Rutherford. He was written to not be liked and he did a good job it. The rest I could have thrown away and not cared. The secondary plot with the detectives were completely unneeded, they didn’t do anything to further the plot, and Sara figured things out before they did anyway so all credibility and importance was gone.Sara Winthrop was written well enough, but she seemed inconsistent in her actions and the author kept beating into you that someone was the kidnapper of her kids over and over pulling me from the story and her emotion. The one scene that I did enjoy, and was extremely well written was late in the game where she had to make a gamble….sometimes gambles don’t pay off.What he does right though is create an interesting enough plot that you still want to know why this all is going on. The idea of making the game developer play a game of her own is pretty unique in its’ own right, and fortunately, if you aren’t into the video game scene, it won’t matter. These games are life and death and have nothing to do with the games of her company until the very end.A note on the audiobook: I think a lot of why I didn’t connect with the characters may have had something to do with the narration. I listened to a majority of this in audiobook format, and Erin Spencer is about as entertaining as a text to speech program. There didn’t seem to be anything going into the performance. I know it’s not a play, but there needs to be some emotion going into it.From the Back: Despite my thinking the narration was the cause of my lack of sympathy, it still doesn’t excuse the poor execution of the story and what I thought was just fluff to fill out the pages. After reading the excerpt from the next book at the end, I’m going to stay away from the rest of the series. It was so completely far fetched that all I could do was shake my head. This first book is free on amazon if you still want to check it out. It’s decent, but nothing spectacular or special.

I always thought how do these authors come up with the material, plots and then the twisted endings? What type of people have these stories in their minds to turn words that good you from word to word, chapter to chapter, finally book to book? Ernie Lindsey has one of those kinds that churns out book after book with different characters and different plots. Sara's Game, one in The Sara Winthrop Thriller Series, Sara is a mother, wife, even though her husband has been missing for two years, and extremely successful business woman, what does Ernie have in store for Sara? Sara is faced with evil that has entertained a life and death game. The evil has been lurking so near, setting Sara up by taking those who are most precious to be innocent pawns in the game. Sara's mind which has made her a successful mother and business woman, the juries still out on successful wife, is Examined and dissected for the readers enjoyment. Does Sara win the game? Thank you Ernie Lindsey for the rollercoaster ride.

This book packs a punch from the very beginning. Although other reviewers have said that the villain is obvious from the outset, I would have to disagree. Yes, that person's identity becomes fairly obvious early on but there are a number of red herrings along the way. We are definitely led to suspect someone else for a great deal of the story, even though there are hints about the person who ultimately does prove to be behind it all. Whether the reader identifies the perpetrator or not is not really relevant as Sara is the person who needs to find out who is behind it and why. Many of the peripheral characters remain ghostlike as there is no need to delve deeply into their psyches, they are there purely to lead us further into the story. The main characters are developed through their involvement with the events of the story. We get to know Teddy's shortcomings through his interactions with Sara, mostly in the workplace but also as they come up against each other during this momentous day. Again we get to know the police officers through their working relationship but also in the way they work things out individually.The plot here was good and the tension, which built from the outset, never let up. I made the decision not to read this before settling down to sleep as I was sure that if I did, it would keep me awake for hours. That proved to be a correct decision for the reasons stated, but I may as well have read it because it kept me awake, buzzing round my head for hours anyway and it has remained with me for much of the day. To me that is the mark of a good book.

I found this story to be very pacy - the events take place over the course of one day - which is good for a story of this type. You can get into the story very quickly and I only needed a few sittings to finish this book.The narrating alternates between Sara, the title character and the victim, and Detective Johnson, who is one of the officers investigating the disappearance of Sara's children. This allows us to see the same crime from two different perspectives, although their stories of how they come to the same answers and how they reach them is different. There are some predictable outcomes - both from realising who the villian actually is and who the villian can't be - but there are still some unexpected twists and turns so I was able to keep reading.This book was free on the Kindle market when I purchased this, but I would have been happy to pay. I will read it again at some point and I will see what else the author has to offer.

This story certainly hits the ground running. Sara having only just got to work gets a phone call to say her children have disappeared. Without a doubt a mothers worst nightmare. We are then taken on a race against time to see if Sara can save her children.The story is mainly told through the point of view of Sara herself as well as a few from DJ a detective who is working on the case. Whoever has them certainly wants to put Sara through the mill by not only playing with her mind but with the readers also.Sara's Game is certainly a fast paced and quick read. It did feel a bit frenzied at times and I did have to re read parts to try and keep up with what was going on. Saying that, the story line had me hooked as I needed to know the who and why. A solid enough start to a new series to me.

Sara Winthrop is an ex-programmer now working as the head of marketing for LightPulse Productions, a video game company in Portland, Oregon. Her husband Brian disappeared 2 years ago without warning and now her 3 children have been kidnapped from 2 separate schools at the same time, just like an Al-Qaeda operation.So, sit back and enjoy the ride! This thriller is told from 2 points of view, Sara Winthrop the mother and Detective Jonathan Johnson the policeman on the case. It is really good that you get these 2 separate views of the same story, the victim and the police. I enjoyed reading these 2 paths on the same time line.Sara makes a decision to play the game along with the kidnapper at the start of this story. I was very surprised at her decision as it seemed an impossible task to play a game against the kidnapper and save her children. Most mothers would realize that entering a game against a kidnapper is foolish and they would leave the search for their children to the police. But Sara is a "badass chick" and uses her gaming experience to challenge the kidnapper before her children are put in further danger. There are some nice tasks given to Sara, especially in the first game level! This makes you wonder which direction this story will take. There is great suspense as Sara plays the kidnappers game which builds a nice, nagging tension. The story line leads the reader along a path thinking about the kidnappers, who they are and what is their motive.In addition to the basic story there is a lovely banter between Detective Jonathan Johnson and his superior, Inspector Barker, This dialogue gives a good insight into police work and the games they play.The ending of sara's game is okay but the thrill of this novel is the search for her children and the games the kidnappers play on Sara. I downloaded this 379 KB eBook from Amazon, which was written in 2012. I think it is a good book and I vote it 4 stars.

Sara's Game is a gripping read. It is a well-written fast-paced rollercoaster ride of a story - with plenty of ups and downs on the way. I thought I had solved this from the beginning, but how wrong I was.....The only downside of the story was the ending....I did guess where Sara was going and who she was visiting and I wished it hadn't ended that way. (Sorry to be vague, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone).I originally downloaded this book because it was free and it had my name in the title!! The reviews piqued my interest and I figured that I had nothing to lose. I'm glad I got it and would have paid for it if I had known how excellent it was. I would recommend Sara's Game to anyone who enjoys thrillers that draw you in and have you rooting for the heroine.An excellent read.