Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: Elimination
SERIES: After Dark #3
AUTHOR: Jackie D.
PUBLISHER: Bold Strokes Books
LENGTH: 266 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 1, 2020
BLURB:
Dylan Prey is willing to risk her life and her cover to help Homeland Security and the CIA bring wanted terrorist Carol O’Brien to justice. Deep undercover inside the Russian mafia, Dylan does whatever it takes to secure her place in the mafia’s upper ranks. Finding love amidst the lies, manipulation, and violence isn’t easy.
NSA cyberstalker Emma Quinn has just joined the team responsible for taking down O’Brien’s top lieutenants, but they’ll need every ounce of her genius to find and capture O’Brien herself. Emma is shy, awkward, and brilliant. Dylan is fierce, charismatic, and unyielding. Their dynamic is exactly what the team needs to complete the mission, but it spells disaster for the attraction that simmers between them.
The race is on to bring Carol O’Brien to justice before more lives are lost. Friendships will be tested, relationships strained, and one of the team may pay the ultimate price.
REVIEW:
The third book in this fast-paced, high-stakes series takes things to an international level, introducing a secret agent deep undercover and a shy NSA hacker who learn the hard way that opposites definitely attract. I’m a fan of this series as a whole, and while this isn’t my favorite so far, it’s still an exciting read.
Our heroines from the first two books—Brooke, Tyler, Caden, and Jennifer—are now joined by brilliant, awkward NSA agent Emma Quinn to find out the whereabouts of the traitorous Carol O’Brien in Russia. They cross missions with Dylan Prey, a lone wolf agent three years undercover as a low-level Russian mafia member. Dylan knows she’s risking her initial mission and her own life to help the CIA, but she’s instantly endeared to Emma’s shy sweetness and her surprisingly blunt, pragmatic outlook on life.
This book ramps up the spy-craft, which I always love. Dylan and Emma even have to go undercover as a couple to cover their tracks, and that’s a trope I can always get behind. I like both of these characters and they work well together, but everything happens so fast, and declarations of love come pretty quickly. This is an issue I had with the couples in the first two books, too, but within an action-packed story, I don’t mind if complex romances take the backseat for a bit.
To enjoy this book, you’ll have to have read the first two books in the series—Infiltration and Pursuit. The first book introduces Brooke and Tyler, the main relationship and “heart” of the series, and the second revolves around Jennifer and Caden, who were also in the first book. But this book is sort of an outlier, because Emma and Dylan weren’t in the story at all until now. We had more time to fall for the other two couples, so even if their story is full of drama and romance, their relationship isn’t quite as developed. I’m also not a fan of Jackie D.’s love scenes, because they’re too rushed and contain no dialogue, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. But the chemistry between Emma and Dylan comes through in different ways—in something as so small as hand-holding and as so large as unending loyalty.
I’m eager to see more of all of these characters—together, apart, and kicking ass. This is a fun series about strong, capable woman who love their country, careers, and each other, and in the end, its just a ton of fun.
RATING: 
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