Hostile Intent // by Lynette Eason

//published 2021//

I’ve really been enjoying Eason’s Danger Never Sleeps series, so I was excited when I received a copy of the final book from the publisher in exchange for this review.  Links to my thoughts on the rest of the series can be found here.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this book.  The pacing is solid and I was interested to find the conclusion.  Some of the twists I guessed, but not so many that it ruined my reading experience.  The characters are overall likable, although Ana does flirt with the “perfect character” line – I’m kind of over characters who literally speak six languages, are masters of self-defense and firearms, know how to scuba-dive and rock climb, can fly a helicopter, and somehow manage to go four days in a row with no sleep yet keep going – but, haha, they don’t cook so it’s not like they’re PERFECT! *eye roll* Sometimes it’s just a little too much.

Setting aside her perfection, I was still rooting for Ana to not only stay safe from the guy who is after her, but for her to be able to find out the truth about her father and reach a place of peace with her past.  Eason does a really good job of making her characters be Christians, but in a quiet way – it’s just a part of their essence, and they live by those values without making a big deal about it.  I also appreciate that Eason doesn’t have everyone participate in “missionary dating” where one person is a Christian and the other isn’t.

While Hostile Intent wasn’t the best thriller I’ve ever read, it was still an enjoyable and engaging read.  I really feel like this series could have been better connected – while there are overlapping characters because they are all friends with each other, there wasn’t any kind of overarching plot that linked the books with one another.  These could definitely be read as standalones, so I guess there are pluses and minuses to the minimal connections.

Thanks again to Revell for providing me with a copy of this one, and I look forward to seeing what Eason writes next!!

Active Defense // by Lynette Eason

YAY!! Reviews for January IN January!! A momentous occasion! While Active Defense wasn’t the first book I read in January, it was a book that I received from the publisher so I wanted to get this review written before I delved into the rest of this month’s books.

Third in Eason’s Danger Never Sleeps series, this story focuses on Heather and was probably my favorite of the series so far. All of these books are centered on a group of friends who met/served together in the military in Afghanistan, but I appreciate the fact that Eason doesn’t try to politicize her stories. Most of the action takes place stateside, but Eason uses the military and Afghanistan as a backdrop that is effective and engaging.

//published 2021//

Heather worked as a field surgeon when she was in Afghanistan, and is now back home in South Carolina as a civilian, working in a hospital there. However, she’s recently become convinced that someone is following her – and she can’t figure out why. She confesses her concern to her friends one night when they’ve gathered for a cookout. Present are several characters from the last two books, including Travis, who owns a security agency and employs a couple of the other characters. That night, when Heather gets home, she notices several things out of place at her house and even though her alarm hasn’t been triggered, believes someone is hiding in her house. When she sees a picture of her and her closest friends on the refrigerator, each of them now sporting a red dot on their foreheads that weren’t there earlier, she grabs her emergency cash and emergency gun and bails, only letting her friends know that she’s going into hiding and that they may be in danger, not telling them where she’s headed.

The action in this one felt well-paced and (for the situation) believable. Now that more relationships have been established within the group of friends, the story was more cohesive than the earlier books – originally the readers were just told that these people all trusted one another, but now we’ve seen them working together and have watched that trust develop.

Sometimes the “side story” feels extraneous and distracting, but here I liked the addition of Ryker’s story. His background with an abusive father tied in well to Heather’s background, giving her more depth and helping us to better understand some of her actions, while also showing how situations where someone is being abused are frequently nuanced – not because the abuse is ever justified, but because it can be so difficult for victims to extract themselves from these horrible situations.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read – what I would call “lite” thriller – definitely a thriller, but not necessarily with the dark intensity that that term generally conjures up. While this reads best within the context of the earlier two books, it still stands independently and can be read that way, although you’ll miss some of the background connections between other characters. I’ve liked Heather from the beginning of the series and was glad to see her get her own story. Also, while I originally thought this was going to be a trilogy (mainly because Eason seems to favor them) but it appears that a fourth book is scheduled to be published this year.

Conclusion – 4* for an engaging and enjoyable read. Special thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy, which didn’t impact my opinions at all.

Acceptable Risk // by Lynette Eason

//published 2020//

Earlier this year I read the first book in this series, Collateral Damage.  Since I enjoyed it, I requested to receive a copy of this sequel from the publisher in exchange for a review.  Unfortunately, while Acceptable Risk wasn’t a bad read, it never quite pulled me in.  The pacing felt uneven, and I never really connected with the plot.

Sarah is an investigative reporter in the Army, and the book opens shortly after she’s been kidnapped by a terrorist.  She’s rescued by a character we met in the first book, Gavin, but there’s a shoot-out in the process and Sarah is injured.  While she’s in the hospital, her father, a high-level Army officer, discreetly “arranges” to have Sarah discharged for mental health reasons because Sarah is having bad nightmares.  Sarah’s relationship with her dad has always been very poor.  He never wanted her to join the Army at all, and disinherited her when she did.  Sarah is outraged when she finds out that she’s been discharged, and is determined to find her way back to the Army once she heals.  In the meantime, she turns her investigative skills towards finding out more details about her brother’s last few weeks of life – he committed suicide just a few days before Sarah was kidnapped, despite the fact that he seemed to be doing much better with his mental health according to everyone closest to him, including his doctors.  As Sarah and Gavin begin unraveling seemingly disparate threads, they begin to wonder if there is something much, much bigger going on.

So there were a lot of things about this book that I did enjoy.  While I had mixed feelings about Sarah herself (more on that later), I really liked Gavin a lot, and also Sarah’s brother Caden, whom we met in the last book.  (It’s another brother who has killed himself.)  The concept that somehow someone is forcing veterans to kill themselves was creepy and intriguing.  Also, with a theme like suicide there is obviously some discussion about mental health, which I overall felt like was handled well, acknowledging how treatment for one person doesn’t look the same as it does for another person.  Sarah, for instance, is very against medication, but her brother was on medication that he felt was helping him adjust, and neither option is presented as better or worse than the other.

Sarah herself is a character I had a rather love/hate relationship with.  There were a lot of things about Sarah that I liked – she’s intelligent, hardworking, and loyal – but she also has this HUGE beef with her dad and spends pretty much the entire book whining about him, and has apparently spent her entire life trying to hurt his feelings/make him mad.  She absolutely refuses to even consider that it’s even a tiny bit possible that even a little fraction of his actions come from a place of love and wanting to protect her.  Instead, she’s obsessed with him being the big villain in her life who ruins everything because he’s a control freak – which basically turns her into a control freak because she literally can’t handle anyone else making decisions for or about her, even small ones, or even ones that are made while she’s UNCONSCIOUS for pity’s sake.  I really have a lot of trouble empathizing with adults who blame all of their life problems on their parents.  Yes, your parents are important and your parents can really screw you up.  But if you’re 30 and still blaming your parents for your life problems, when you’ve been on your own for a decade, it’s time to wonder if at least some of your problems are because of you.  Also, Sarah is supposedly a Christian, but the fact that she has this gigantic forgiveness issue isn’t ever really addressed within that framework – the entire deal with Sarah and her dad is just kind of tidied up at the end with a “oh I guess he loves me after all!” and then we all move on… ???  There’s another point where Gavin tells Sarah’s dad that he (the dad) needs to apologize to Sarah if he ever wants Sarah’s forgiveness and… that’s not actually how forgiveness is supposed to work.  You don’t have to get an apology first.  If you’re hanging on to bitterness and anger, you’re only hurting yourself – getting an apology is a completely different part of healing.  In short, I felt like Sarah was just as much to blame for her bad relationship with her dad as her dad was, but her dad gets all the blame and is supposed to do all the groveling, and that really annoyed me.

In the end, there is a big chase scene/villain reveal that felt kind of over-the-top all things considered.  Exciting, but a bit more in a ???? way than an I’m-genuinely-engaged way, if that makes sense.

All in all, I didn’t dislike this book, but I didn’t love it either, leaving it with that dreaded 3* rating.  I’ll still definitely read the third book when it appears, but this one felt like a weaker entry to the series to me.

Thank you to Revell for a review copy of this book – receiving it for free didn’t change my opinions at all.

Collateral Damage // Lynette Eason

//published 2020//

I read an enjoyed Eason’s Hidden Identity trilogy a while back, so when I had an opportunity to read a reviewer’s copy of the first book in her new series, I took it.   Collateral Damage is a solid start to a series with likable characters and good pacing.  It wasn’t particularly a stand-out thriller for me, but it was still an enjoyable, 3.5* read.

The story focuses on Brooke, who was a military psychiatrist in Afghanistan until she was honorably discharged after she was injured in an explosion.  Now she works privately in South Carolina, determined to leave her past behind.

Meanwhile, Asher has also left the army behind after a terrorist incident killed several men for whom he was responsible.  Plagued with nightmares, he finally decides to seek psychiatric help, and sets up an appointment with Brooke.  However, when he arrives, he finds Brooke’s secretary murdered, and it appears that the killer was actually trying to get Brooke.  Soon, Asher and Brooke are caught up in a deadly cat-and-mouse game, struggling to find out why Brooke has suddenly become a target.

There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this one, including the characters themselves, who were relatable and likable.  However, it was a little jarring how quickly Asher and Brooke hit it off.  Apparently, they somewhat knew each other in Afghanistan, but it would have been helpful if there had been a little more backstory for them as Brooke’s almost immediate complete trust in Asher felt abrupt.  I knew Asher was one of the good guys, but how did Brooke know?  From her perspective, she comes in to work and finds her secretary dead and a strange man there – Asher.  Having Brooke immediately let Asher follow her around everywhere felt weird to me, and could have been dealt with if they had had a little more history up front.

Overall, though, the pacing was good, bringing together several strands quite well.  I was engaged in the various aspects of the mystery, trying to see how the pieces were going to mesh.  The conclusion was believable.  And while this book tied up all its loose ends, there are secondary characters who seem likely to make an appearance in their own books later on.

All in all, while Collateral Damage wasn’t a mind-blowing read, it was an enjoyable one that I recommend.

Hidden Identity Trilogy // by Lynette Eason

• No One to Trust
• Nowhere to Turn
• No Place to Hide

//published 2014//

I was actually quite excited to find a new (to me) Christian suspense author, especially since my old favorite, Dee Henderson, has gone a bit downhill ever since she introduced Perfect Ann into the mix.

Eason’s books are thoroughly engaging.  While they weren’t THE most riveting stories I’ve ever read, they were still decently written with likable characters.

In No One to Trust we meet Summer, who is about to discover that her husband isn’t the person she thought he was.  Once they’re on the lam, truth and lies are tangled together and it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  This one was a 3.5/5 for me, with a lot more action than actual story, but I was willing to go with it because the action was a good romp.  Summer’s sister was really annoying me, and it sometimes felt like some details were kind of glossed over to help things make sense, but still a good time.

//published 2014//

The second book takes place a year or so later (I honestly can’t remember how long, a bit but not super long) and focuses on Adam, who was a character in the first book.  Summer and her husband have now started an organization that is kind of a private witness protection program, except people aren’t usually witnesses, they just need help getting out of a bad situation.  Case in point is Danielle, who is trying to escape her incredibly abusive husband.  When he dies the day that Danielle is making her break for freedom, she at first thinks her problems are solved – except then some new problems arrive, and she and Adam have to untangle the complications.  This book was nonstop careening around, and that worked for the most part.  There were moments were I found myself wondering how these people were still awake, since it seemed like no one ever needed to sleep, and the baddies just kept coming!  Still, 3.5/5, and would have been a 4 except there was an ending to the book with a villain and everything is good… and then there was a second ending where it turns out there is the OTHER villain lurking in the background??  And second villain didn’t really make nearly as much sense as first villain, so the whole thing ended up feeling kind of contrived.

//published 2015//

The final book is about Ian and Jackie, with character from the first two books as background characters in this one.  Ian has been set up as a fall guy for a bioterrorist plot, except he finds out just in time and manages to escape.  He can’t turn himself in, so the good guys and the bad guys are after him, all while he’s trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  Jackie gets caught up in the madness, too, and they run around in circles for a couple hundred pages.  I’m not always a huge fan of terrorist plotlines, but this one felt like it worked.

The religion aspect throughout the series felt organic and not at all preachy.  It was also nice that the characters were all Christians, rather than the missionary-dating method sometimes used by other authors.  While these weren’t the most amazing thrillers I have ever read, they were quite enjoyable, and I definitely intend to check out some more of Eason’s books.