Becky's Great Book Reviews The Business Trip by Jesse Garcia

Wow, be prepared for a terrific page-turner with Jessie Garcia's The Business Trip. This psychological thriller from a first-time novelist and Wisconsin-based writer was top-notch.

Two women prepare for a trip. One, Jasmine, has every reason to be frightened as she makes her stealthy escape from her controlling and abusive boyfriend. Having saved and scraped together money for months for her one-way airplane ticket, Jasmine doesn't know what she's going to do when she gets to Denver. She is also terrified that her crazy ex will come after her.

The other woman, Stephanie, is a successful newsroom executive travelling to San Diego for a news conference, with a stopover in Denver. She is weary of her demanding work schedule and does not look forward to the conference. Stephanie yearns for a break from her unrelenting professional life.

The narrative skips to other's points of view. Robert, Stephanie's neighbor and cat sitter begins to get odd texts from Stephanie saying she met a man at the conference and is heading to Atlanta with him. Bruce, Lucy, and Dave (Stephanie's colleagues) get strange texts the Monday after the conference from Stephanie explaining her absence from work, which is out of character. in addition, Anna, Jasmine's friend from her waitressing job who helped her with the getaway, gets texts from Jasmine related to what her ex-boyfriend might be up to.

Then we get Trent's perspective, another news director, but from Atlanta. He is at the conference in San Diego, annoyingly flirting with Stephanie and getting rejected. When he returns to Atlanta, his life is turned upside down when the police come after him for suspicion of foul-play in the disappearance of Stephanie and Jasmine. The two women's phones and Stephanie's wallet were found buried in his backyard. Also, damning DNA is found in his coat and suitcase.

A spur of the moment, chilling scheme is revealed, describing how a sinister but ingenious plan unfolds. A plan that "vindicates the ones who had it so good they didn't even recognize it."

The dichotomy of the characters in The Business Trip kept them from being cliche and added to the overall intrigue. A couple well-placed, fantastic twists kept the plot skipping along. I give Jessie Garcia's debut novel five stars out of five.