Book #2: The Chain, Adrian McKinty

About the book: 

YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST.
AND YOU WILL CERTAINLY NOT BE THE LAST.

YOUR PHONE RINGS.

A STRANGER HAS KIDNAPPED YOUR CHILD.

TO FREE THEM YOU MUST ABDUCT SOMEONE ELSE'S CHILD.

YOUR CHILD WILL BE RELEASED WHEN YOUR VICTIM'S PARENTS KIDNAP ANOTHER CHILD.

IF ANY OF THESE THINGS DON'T HAPPEN:

YOUR CHILD WILL BE KILLED.

YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE CHAIN

Group Discussion Questions: 

What do you think about the comment – with Facebook/social media, we’re becoming our own surveillance?(as we upload location, favorite foods, interest, hobbies and political ideas) Are we really our own Secret Police? How much information is too much to share? Do we share too much? 

 

• If you had to describe the Chain in 3 adjectives what would you choose? 
• Could you continue The Chain? 
• Could you not picture yourself going to the police or would you take your chances? Would you get a gun and go through a kidnapping? 
• How would you pick your target? Would you go for a child or a spouse? 
• Who would you use as an accomplice to help you continue The Chain? 
• Who would you cast in the upcoming movie of The Chain for each of the characters?
• What did we think of the books characters? Were they complex? Did we have qualms about them?
• How did the characters change throughout the course of the story? In what ways might you have to evolve to survive? 
• Which character did you relate to the most, and what was it about them that you connected with?
• How well does the author ratchet up the suspense? Was the book a nice, slow-burn? Or was it an adrenaline pumping, fast-paced page turner?
• A good ending is the key to every great book. Do you feel like the ending did the book justice?
• This book talks about how all books should end with 77 chapters and in fact ends in 77 chapters. Moby Dick the example is far greater in length. Do you think this book sufficiently told it’s story in 77 chapters? 
• What are your overall thoughts and feelings of the book?
• What was your favorite part of The Chain? Why?
• What was the scariest part of The Chain to you and why? 
• Did you pick out any themes throughout the book?
• How did you feel about the ending? What did you like, what did you not like, and what do you wish had been different?
• Did the book change your opinion or perspective about anything? Do you feel different now than you did before you read it?
• What songs does this book make you think of?
• If you got the chance to ask the author of this book one question, what would it be?
• Do you agree with the statement, “The chain” is a cruel method of exploiting the most important human emotion, the capacity for love? That the chain really is a metaphor for the ties that bind all of us to friends and family. The umbilical link between mother and child, the path that a hero must travel in a quest…Discuss your thoughts and feelings on this. 
• What were your thoughts when the piece of mirrored glass that Rachel so desperately avoided throughout the story are what saved her in her final battle against Ginger? 
• What do you think would have happened next, had we have known the results of Rachel’s pregnancy test?