Review by Booklist Review
Let's call her Alex, though she has many names. One such name is the Chemist her moniker at the government agency responsible for high-tech torture, which formerly employed her. Now they want her dead: she knows too much. Years into Alex's hiding, they contact her to help them stave off a massive biological terror event that will kill hundreds of thousands. Despite her paranoia (she's the sort who sleeps in a gas mask and triggers her hotel rooms with booby traps), she nabs the target, a seemingly guileless school teacher and sets to torturing him with her array of chemical cocktails. These fast, smart, and brutal first 100 pages are Meyer's finest hour, proving she has the tools to pen thrillers with the best of them. From there, though, things go south. (Minor spoilers ahead.) Her target, Daniel, is proven innocent, and her mission a lie. Much of the rest of the book, then, feels oddly like Twilight, with Alex repeatedly celebrating how Daniel is good just as Bella droned on about how Edward was perfect. The main plot is far less interesting than the biological terror concept, and otherwise muscular writing is juvenilized by the overuse of fillers like um and words like squicky. Meanwhile, two rich themes the morality of torture and the sadness of being denied a normal life are barely addressed. For sure, this is a bittersweet book, one where Meyer proves her skills to doubters and then doesn't seem to know what to do with them.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actor Archer does a great job voicing this romantic thriller from Meyer. She uses three narrative tones: neutral for the book's third person narration; tough for when protagonist Alex, a former operative for a secret U.S. government agency that killed her mentor, is fighting to stay alive; and soft for when Alex is dreaming about or partaking in an unlikely romance. She also gives each of the secondary male characters his own clear and recognizable voice. Archer's pacing changes in accordance with the degrees of tension of the plot-and each scene is full of devastating new threats and clever new ways of thwarting them. Meyer fans will enjoy Archer's reading. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
She's been running for three years, but an email from her former black ops employer promises to change everything. So Alex, an interrogation specialist, thought. After kidnapping and questioning Daniel Beach, the man identified as her target, Alex learns that this was a trap meant to eliminate her through a former CIA operative who also happens to be Daniel's brother, Kevin. Now the three are being hunted for a secret that reaches into the upper echelons of the U.S. government. When Kevin is apprehended, Alex and Daniel realize that they must make one final, dangerous move that will either save them or destroy them all. Verdict The best-selling author of the "Twilight" series and The Host has written an entertaining, fast-paced, action-packed thriller, with some light romance added to the mix. Definitely more appropriate for Meyer's adult fans, but also a fun read for those who appreciate the lighter side of spy fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 7/25/16.]-Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A professional torturer on the run from her employers falls in with sexy twin brothers.You probably know Meyer as the then-27-year-old Mormon housewife who woke up from a dream about vampires and gave the world Twilight, though in addition to that series she has already published one adult thriller (The Host, 2008). In her latest, she marries the genres of spy versus spy and throbbing romance novel with good results. Meet Juliana, or Alex, or Casey, or Chriswhatever her alias of the moment is, she's an operative with a medical school background who specializes in chemically controlled torture and interrogation. Somewhere along the line, she learned too much about the secrets of her employers, and she now lives in a state of high-tech paranoia, sleeping in a bathtub wearing a gas mask in a secret location booby-trapped at every possible ingress. When her old boss calls her in for one last mission, she's not sure she isn't being double-crossedbut nonetheless proceeds with the kidnapping of Washington, D.C., schoolteacher Daniel Beach, who's purportedly part of a vile plot to release a virus that will wreak global doom. In fact, he is a man whose deep inner goodness is rivaled only by his scorching outer hotnessbut our socially awkward virgin heroine won't realize this until after she's taken him to her secret lair, stripped him naked, strapped him to a table, and injected him with compounds that produce pure agony for 10 minutes at a time. The biochemical magic between them is even more powerful than the nasty drugs, and by the time his identical twin brother, a swashbuckling black-ops type, shows up to kill her and rescue him, love has bloomed in the torture chamber. As they begin to see through the layers of cross and double cross, the two agents decide to join forces and go into hiding together, with the brother of course, on a ranch in Texas with a pack of trained superdogs. A tale of skulduggery, bodice rippery, and shoot-'em-up action unfolds, complete with help from a luscious mistress of disguise who could have stepped right out of a James Bond novel. Rated B for badass. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
