A compelling romantic thriller with appealing characters.
While running from his dangerous past, a man stumbles into his oldest crush’s hometown in Jolie’s novel.
Erik Lai is a professional hacker who changed his last name to Yeung as a protective measure. After deciding to separate from Spectre, a crime syndicate, he and his team (Wolf, Trevor, and Kairi) have been hunted by assassins. During the killers’ last attempt on their lives, they murdered Kairi’s fiance and forced the team to go deep into hiding. Erik’s company monitors the dark web for threats for the United States government and other organizations, so luckily for him and his team, they can do their work remotely. To help Kairi feel safe, they go back to the Napa Valley town where she grew up. Once there, Erik tracks Firefly, aka Vivi, an old gamer friend he’s never met in person, and discovers that she’s the owner of a small local bookstore. He doesn’t immediately tell her who he really is because he doesn’t want her to know that he tracked her IP address, which inevitably breaks an old promise they made to stay anonymous forever. In the process of getting to know Vivi, Erik finds himself struggling to decide whether he should stay with her or go back into hiding. Jolie gives the novel a strong start with a description of an assassin attempting to break into Erik’s home, which adds validity to the characters’ constant concerns about being attacked again. Jolie’s action scenes, suspense, and engaging plot developments make it easy for readers to put themselves in Erik’s shoes. Similarly, her talent for character development, as when Vivi banters with her grandfather and siblings, adds further depth and helps to build a cast of likable characters—even when Erik lacks a certain amount of social intelligence, as when he doesn’t understand why tracking someone’s IP address might be seen as intrusive.
A compelling romantic thriller with appealing characters.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Noctivity
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
If you love good crime writing but aren’t familiar with Winslow’s work, read this trilogy in order.
The dramatic conclusion to the trilogy about two New England crime families begun in City on Fire (2022) and City of Dreams (2023).
Near the end of his journey, multimillionaire Danny Ryan watches a casino implode in a mushroom cloud of dust and muses about his life’s implosions: “The cancer that killed his wife, the depression that destroyed his love, the moral rot that took his soul.” Danny is from Providence, Rhode Island, and desperately tried to leave his criminal life behind him. But using a ton of ill-gotten gains, he invests heavily in Las Vegas properties. Congress is conducting an investigation into gambling that could destroy his casino business and even land him in jail. An FBI agent plans to take Danny down for major sins he’d like to repent for. Meanwhile, can he make peace with his enemies? Nope, doesn’t look like it. Even if the parties involved want to put the past behind them, the trouble is that they don’t trust each other. Is Vern Winegard setting Dan up? Is Dan setting Vern up? “Trust? Trust is children waiting for Santa Claus.” So what could have been a “Kumbaya,” nobody-wants-to-read-this story turns into a grisly bloodletting filled with language that would set Sister Mary Margaret’s wimple on fire—figuratively speaking, as she’s not in the book. But the Catholic reference is appropriate: Two of the many colorful characters of ill repute are known as the Altar Boys, serving “Last Communion” to their victims. On the law-abiding side and out of the line of fire is an ex-nun-turned-prosecutor nicknamed Attila the Nun, who’s determined to bring justice for a gory matricide. (Rhode Island really had such a person, by the way.) Finally, the prose is just fun: A friend warns Dan about Allie Licata: “In a world of sick fucks, even the sick fucks think Licata’s a sick fuck.” A couple of things to note: This not only ends the trilogy, but it also closes out the author’s career, as he has said he’ll write no more novels.
If you love good crime writing but aren’t familiar with Winslow’s work, read this trilogy in order.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780063079472
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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