The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold

De: Cate Holahan

Narrado por: Caroline Hewitt, Emily Lawrence

A harrowing abduction becomes a tantalizing nationwide game in a twisty and ingenious novel of suspense by a USA Today bestselling author.

Alice Ingold has been kidnapped. Call the police. Alert the media. You can’t play this game without all the pieces.

Beautiful, blond, and immensely privileged, Alice Ingold is the perfect victim for a true-crime obsessed culture—and for a masked duo with a singular purpose. Instead of a demand for ransom, her captors have a riddle, and they’re inviting the entire country to solve it.

No one is more invested in the search than Alice’s parents: Catherine, a socialite with obscene generational wealth, and Brian, a visionary AI tech guru. But while Brian turns to machines to solve the problem, Catherine tries to crowdsource the solution, stopping at nothing to bring her daughter home. And America isn’t just watching the story unfold…it’s playing along. The nationwide scavenger hunt for Alice is on.

As an increasingly desperate Catherine strives to understand each new clue, a complex picture of the crime develops. Soon, everyone will see the kidnapping of Alice Ingold for what it is—and Alice won’t be the only one who will need saving.

©2025 Catherine Holahan. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

My favorite book of the year

The most compellingly well written book I’ve experienced in a long time! The way she weaves together the story with the best vocabulary while simultaneously keeping you guessing the entire time is phenomenal. I couldn’t put it down.

The kidnapping of Alice Ingold

What a way to start a book. Cate Holahan wastes no time pulling you straight into the chaos. This is my first of her novels, and I can already tell I’ll be picking up more. Her writing is sharp, immersive, and incredibly easy to read — the kind of storytelling that makes the pages fly even when you’re slightly disoriented.

The premise centers around Alice Ingold, a high-profile figure whose kidnapping ignites a media frenzy and unravels layers of technology, power, and control. What makes this story feel especially timely is its heavy focus on AI — not just as a tool, but as a looming force reshaping society. In a world where artificial intelligence can research, schedule trips, manage budgets, fix human error, and practically run entire systems, Holahan taps into a very real fear: What happens when technology becomes more powerful than the people controlling it?

As much as I adore my own ChatGPT (we call her Quinn 😉), this book forces you to confront the unsettling side of progress. Jobs disappearing. Industries shifting. Control concentrating in the hands of the wealthy and powerful. It feels incredibly relevant to the current job market and the uneasy relationship we all have with rapidly advancing tech.

Around the 60% mark I genuinely thought, WTF am I reading? 😂 The twists get murky, motivations blur, and you’re left questioning who is manipulating whom. It’s disorienting in a way that feels intentional — like you’re meant to feel off-balance. And underneath it all is a darker commentary on what money and power can do to people. The selfishness. The control. The way ambition can smother love, empathy, and basic human decency.

While I did feel confused at times, I can absolutely see why her books tend to fall in that 3.5–4 star range. She writes compelling, thought-provoking thrillers that mirror the anxieties of our modern world.

Unsettling. Timely. Slightly chaotic — but in a way that makes you keep reading

Preachy AF

I was really interested in the premise of this book, and based on the blurb, I expected it to be a social commentary. I am a fan of social commentary. I am NOT, however, a fan of social preaching. This book is extremely heavy-handed with its message about AI, which is one I actually agree with, but no one wants to be repeatedly beat over the head with super on-the-nose messaging that drags on for nearly 11 hours.

I actually nearly gave up early in, before all the anti-AI preaching, because I hated the narration so much. Emliy Lawrence's voice is both nasal and drawling, and makes an already preachy character sound even more condescending.

Meh

Books with Social Messages pounded into readers’ heads make me crazy, even when I agree with those messages. THE KIDNAPPING OF ALICE INGOLD wants readers to be aware that AI has the potential to be a Very Bad Thing which anyone who’s paying attention already knows.

I also don’t like when villains have no redeeming qualities. Give me a murder who feeds stray cats or even a rapist who takes gentle care of his elderly aunt. Don’t give me any characters who are all black or white, at the extremes of the pendulum.

Part of the resolution had tension, until it went way over the top. Maybe you’ll like THE KIDNAPPING OF ALICE INGOLD more than me.

DNF

This book was ridiculous, I did not enjoy the story. I could not finnish the book