Mental institution. Internet chat room. Stalker. Chicago. Seattle. Murderer.
This novel contains strong language, violence and sexual content.
She is trying to get out of the mental institution. He wants to keep her in. The only possibility for her release is to hand over her prize possession-her journal, but can she trust him with her secrets?
In the dead of winter, Sydney Hayes finds herself in an internet chat room in hopes of expelling her loneliness. Enchanted by a stranger, she soon finds herself caught up in an affair that spills over into her everyday life. Within a short period of time, the stranger captures her mind, her body and eventually her heart, but excitement turns to terror and Sydney must abandon the life she built in Chicago and assume a new identity. A fragile woman in a new city, Sydney tries to put it all behind her as she makes a fresh start in Seattle, but her troubles follow her and she is running out of time. Feeling as though she has no other choice, Sydney is determined to destroy him before he destroys her-unaware that her journal holds the key.
Will she discover the secret before it's too late?
I received Net Switch as a gift so I downloaded it without reading a single review or having any advance knowledge about the story. Being an entirely naive reader is a good starting point for this psychological thriller. Denise Baer has created a unique voice for her narrator's diary entries and as the saga loops through a roller coaster ride down a rabbit hole I was carried along. The desire to shake the narrator by the shoulders and say "don't do that!" was almost overwhelming as she makes a less-than-love connection with a man she meets in an Internet chat room. But as the story continued I began to speculate about the narrator's secrets and her veracity as a storyteller. I'm not going to give it away in the review because the journey is the pleasure of this mysterious novel. I recommend it to readers interested in mystery and psychological suspense novels.
