Netgalley provided me with an ARC copy of this book. As I have been trying to broaden my reading this year, and I loved reading a number of books from the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child and was looking for a similar kind of book for continuing my reading in the Thriller genre.
This book follows a retired Delta-Force operative who is determined to solve the murder of a previous team member, even more so when his team member’s family is murdered. This crime needs all his survival skills and knowledge to help him, as the situation takes him across the boarder into Mexico.
The main character in true armed forces conventions, goes by his surname, Breed. We see him fairly rapidly alongside his old team members and he has come out of his battles relatively unscathed in comparison to his friends. As someone whose parents were in the armed forces the characters felt very true to how I have found people who have been involved in the armed forces. They are less driven by emotion, and this comes across in the book.
The other characters that we meet are there to provide a little softness and more emotion than the main character thought they are all characters that you can sympathise with. As we get to know Marisol her story shows why she has the dogged determination to do the right thing, even if it is risking her life.
When you first meet all the characters it can be a little confusing to keep those that were in the Delta force team straight, as they have similar patterns of speech, this however is due to their training so I do understand this but it took me a while to enable myself to distinguish them. The book is immersive and fast paced though in some parts I personally found the book a little overly descriptive that it slowed the pace for me. Overall the book is well written and thoroughly enjoyable.
The main theme was loyalty, both new and old. When you are in a close knit team in the armed forces you become like family. While you can’t prevent anything happening to your new family you build bonds that allow you to look after each other and do your best to ensure everyone returns home. Breed builds new relationships which while they are not as close as his older relationships he knows they have to be loyal to each other as long as they have the same goals.
Trust is also reflected in the theme, a lot of loyalty is based on trust, and it can be difficult to build relationships without trust. The bad guys in the book need to trust each other to ensure that the others won’t sell them out. Simultaneously those that are on the side of good need to trust that the information they are sharing will not be used against them. As a reader I could tell when Breed started to trust those around him more as he reduced the amount of information he was compartmentalising.
This book lives up to the genre of thriller, it is difficult to put down and tense. I gave the book 4 stars.
I will say that there are some topics that are explored in the book that could trigger some people so if you are someone that can be triggered by what you read please ensure that you check for trigger warnings before committing to reading the book.
Indulgent Readers 