LETHAL REDEMPTION

An FBI profiler gets sucked into extracting the vice president’s daughter from the frightening cult she herself defected from as a teen—which means going undercover with the man who broke her heart and facing her mother, who’s now the right hand to the cult leader.

At 13, Grace Steele escaped The Order of the New Dawn, the cult her mother had dragged her to when she was 5. Enfolded into her Aunt Cindy’s family, she immediately gained four male cousins and fell in love with their best friend and neighbor, Cade Wright. The two were inseparable until Grace graduated from college, when Cade reenlisted for another tour as an Army Ranger instead of beginning their well-planned life together. Hurt and furious, Grace joined the FBI as a profiler and kept Cade at arm’s length. However, when the vice president’s daughter joins the cult, Grace is brought in to help and must work with Steele Ops, the security company Cade runs with her cousins. It’s clear the cult’s recruiters aren’t taking the provided bait, though they’d bite immediately if it were Grace on the hook. Cade and Grace go undercover as a couple and allow themselves to be reeled in. Soon they find themselves on the compound in the middle of nowhere and have to play the part of acolytes even as Grace’s mother, now partner to the cult leader, is suspicious and hostile. Yet as she’s thrown back into the nightmare of her childhood, Grace remembers what’s truly important: Cade and the family of her heart. The mission may be the catalyst for her true happiness…if she and Cade can survive. Hunt’s pace and tension are spot-on, though a complicated backstory and some details that demand a bit too much suspension of disbelief occasionally weigh the book down.

High-stakes, sizzling romantic suspense.