Sohrab teaches Darius what friendship is really about: loyalty, honesty, and someone who has your back in a football (soccer) match. But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd. When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life.

Less thriller than psychological puzzler, this novel effectively keep readers guessing.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. They take the journey with Chloe through paralyzing fear toward what seems like love.

This eminently discussable novel continually asks readers to consider whether ends justify means and how power and control affect relationships. At the end, psychologists put her words in the context of how others have responded, challenging her veracity. It is in these interpolations that readers see how Chloe's advocates manipulate facts themselves in order to effect her rescue. Chapters written by Chloe after the fact detail events and alternate with notes, letters, e-mail messages, news reports, Facebook posts and webpages. Her main relationship is with one man who is gentle and kind and eventually becomes her lover. Blindfolded and drugged, Chloe gradually realizes that she is being held as a trade for the release of prisoners whom her captor believes to have been unjustly prosecuted. When she is kidnapped on the side of a road, she is really out of control and frightened.

Held hostage by a terrorist group somewhere in Europe, Chloe finds herself increasingly attracted to her captor as her mother and friends back home do everything they can to free her.Ĭhloe was working in Greece over the summer and is known for how carefully she manages her life.

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