4.5 Stars
I am having a phenomenal week of reading. I cannot remember a week where I read so many wonderful books. What a week.
This book was a huge surprise. Why? Well, because it was a total shot in the dark for me. I’m not even sure how I found this series, but I was reading a review (or something like that….I honestly do not remember the specifics) but the person mentioned this author with a couple of flattering things about the author and the series. So, I did what I always do when I consider starting a new book or series – I jumped to Goodreads and peeked at the ratings. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the first book in the series had a 4.56 rating on Goodreads (and it wasn’t because there were like less than 10 reviews or something.) There were actually almost 6000 ratings with a 4.64 average!! Wow. So, you guessed it. I jumped right on that and I was NOT disappointed.
The writing on this took me a little while to settle in to. Not long, but it is written with very short chapters. Also, as usual, the first book in a series needs to set up the world and introduce us to the characters. But, after the first few chapters, I was used to the flow and style of the writing and before I knew it, I was hooked.
The premise deals with our MMC and former Navy Seal “Axe”. He has recently retired from the Teams when he is approached by a retired 4 star Admiral informing him that the President thinks there might be a traitor in his inner circle and needs someone from outside the “circle” to do some investigating. The President has a “niece” Haley who is a brilliant analyst in the intelligence community. She also thinks that there is something bad in the works, but she is also concerned about who to trust.
Axe and Haley find themselves immediately in the middle of a storm when she is abducted on the day that Axe is going to find her to introduce himself. Thankfully, he sees what is happening and is able to rescue her, but things only get worse from there. What follows is a non-stop completely CRAZY action filled escapade as there is definitely terror attacks planned. Unfortunately, it is not only one attack, nor even two. By the time they realize what they are in the middle of, they are not sure how to get the information to the right people. There are false trails, false flags and the people that should be trustworthy are not.
I LOVED this. I adored the characters of Axe – who is a great guy, but definitely NOT the perfect macho operator. He makes mistakes and he definitely also gets hurt (shot, stabbed, you name it) I loved that he was not one of these perfect guys who does everything right, while pushing the believability factor out the window. Axe is a real guy and boy is he tough…and he has heart.
I liked Haley as well. Haley is brilliant, but she is young so even though she thinks she figures things out, she doesn’t yet have the experience or the confidence to be able to make the people who she needs to convince to believe her. She relies on instinct and has a way of taking intel and finding intuitive leaps that no one else can. Unfortunately, her supervisors want specific proof on HOW she came to her conclusions, and that becomes a problem.
I listened to this on audio and Stacy Carolan did a great job with the narration.
Anyway, this book had me invested until the very end and I just kept shaking my head with the amount of tension that continues to build and build. It was CRAZY in the best way.
Man oh man…..what a ride!