REVIEWED by Jen B.
TITLE: Where Death Meets the Devil
AUTHOR: L.J. Hayward
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 395 Pages
RELEASE DATE: February 26, 2018
BLURB:
Jack Reardon, former SAS soldier and current Australian Meta-State asset, has seen some messy battles. But “messy” takes on a whole new meaning when he finds himself tied to a chair in a torture shack, his cover blown wide open, all thanks to notorious killer-for-hire Ethan Blade.
Blade is everything Jack doesn’t believe in: remorseless, detached, lawless. Yet, Jack’s only chance to survive is to strike a bargain with the devil and join forces with Blade. As they trek across a hostile desert, Jack learns that Blade is much more than a dead-eyed killer—and harder to resist than he should be.
A year later, Jack is home and finally getting his life on track. Then Ethan Blade reappears and throws it all into chaos once more. It’s impossible to trust the assassin, especially when his presence casts doubts on Jack’s loyalty to his country, but Jack cannot ignore what Blade’s return means: the mess that brought them together is far from over, and Ethan might just bring back the piece of Jack’s soul he thought he’d lost forever.
I had a feeling this was going to be good, and I was not disappointed. There are some books you start reading with a feeling that it is going to be the same story you’ve read before but with different characters. This, however, does not fall into that category. It is quite unique for a number of reasons.
First, you are on the edge of your seat throughout the whole story not knowing what is going on but riveted to every page in the hopes of finding out. It jumps back and forth in time from chapter to chapter, which I normally find annoying, but it really works well here. Present day, we don’t really know what is going on, but the looks back into the past shed little details into the time these guys spent together. Yet, still we don’t know the true intentions of Blade, who is extremely mysterious.
Jack, who now finds himself in more trouble after just thinking he was getting his life back on track, is sort of in the same boat now that Blade has made a reappearance stirring things up in spectacular fashion. It felt as though the flashbacks were Jack’s way of trying to recall his time with Blade, looking for clues and understanding as to what was going on current day.
Blade is notorious, a killer who doesn’t stop until the job is complete. But he is never really clear about what the job actually is, which puts Jack on edge and struggling to find answers. It is the ultimate decision of whether to put his trust in Blade, going against all he thinks he knows about his own life, that changes the path of this story.
If I sound a bit vague here, it’s because there is a lot going on in this exciting story and I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice to say, I was on the edge of my seat throughout, couldn’t wait to see how, or if these guys had any kind of chance together, if they even should, and what it all would mean. There is very little sex, maybe two scenes, but the story was intense enough that it didn’t need it. I really loved so many details about this, from the secret code, to how Jack knew about it, how Blade was able to make things happen, his intentions, etc. Then there is the back and forth with the trust issues. Does Jack trust Blade? Does he trust his feelings? Does he trust his own instincts? Who can he trust? What I do know is that I will definitely be looking for more stories from this author in the future and can definitely recommend checking this one out.
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