The Citizens by L.M. Smith

Imagine a town where you can stay out as late as you want, wake up when it suits you, you never have to go to work, and everything is free for the taking. Sounds perfect right? But what if you can't remember where you are or how you got there? What if you can't ever leave? And what if the only other people around are hostages, just like you? Would you still want to stay?

Jasmine Marshall certainly didn't think so until she met Justin Beck; a dashing active-duty member of the United States Army and fellow hostage. With him around life in Kolob might not be so bad after all ... or so she thought. There are vampires and psychics at the breakfast table! Disturbing acts of torture and senseless violence are commonplace. Biochemical warfare is a very real threat, and the town's mayor is an elusive mad-scientist obsessed with his own theories about December 21, 2012!

In a place where one has everything to gain and nothing to lose, one thing reigns true: nothing in Kolob is ever as it seems.

Jasmine gets kidnapped from her farm and winds up in Kolob, locked in a room. She hears another woman trying to get out of her room and, when she finally get out, she goes to try and find help but ends up running into (literally) Beck. None of them remember anything other than waking up in their rooms, they realise they've been kidnapped and placed in this town. Why? Well, that will be discovered later.

The story of this book interested me and the author was offering a free copy for review so I got one. One thing about this book is Jasmine is a very hard-to-like main character, I tried (I really did!) but she is really rude and hard to take. The author made a big point of letting us know that Jazz is a loner and doesn't like people - fair enough. I'm antisocial, I don't like people (there's a reason I work with animals!) but I still know how to act around people, I still have basic social manners. Jazz doesn't, she just plain doesn't! She's rude and treats people horribly but seems to think it's OK - it made me not like her at all. Although I have to say, this quote:

... she'd never really been much of a people person to begin with, not because she was afraid of people but because, as awful as it might be, she just didn't care about them.

, endeared her to me a little 'cos this is exactly how I feel about people. I just don't care.

Aside from my disliking of Jazz (aided by my liking of Beck and how nasty she is to him), I still enjoyed the book. Obviously my hatred of her didn't stop me from reading the book, it didn't stop me from getting involved with them and working with them to try and work out what the hell was happening in that town. And it won't stop me from reading the next book because the storyline is so totally different from anything else out there that I've read and I can't wait to see what happens to our group next.


Book Depository: The Citizens
Amazon UK: The Citizens