2.5 stars

Interesting romantic suspense Kindle Freebie. Common format with a secret group of agents working for the government, Branch, our heroine works for them and she was totally butt kicking. Hero is a childhood love who seems to have turned evil working for his father, the same father that killed heroine's parents.

Action, undercover, and fast paced. I thought towards the end one too many bedroom scenes interrupting the good action that was going on but these two probably deserved that time :)

Some editing mistakes but this looks to be self-published and, again, I downloaded as a Kindle Freebie, so I can look a little past since they weren't completely glaring and/or ruined the flow of story. I'll definitely be checking out the next in series. ( )

"When friends become enemies and enemies become lovers.

Born in the blood of Sierra Leone's Civil War, enslaved, then sold to the US as an orphan, Base Branch operative Sloan Harris is emotionally dead and driven by vengeance. With no soul to give, her body becomes the bargaining chip to infiltrate a warlord's inner circle. The man called The Devil killed her family and helped destroy a region.

As son of the warlord, Baine Kendrick will happily use Sloan's body if it expedites his father's demise. Yet, he is wholly unprepared for the possessive and protective emotions she provokes. Maybe it’s the flashes of memory … two forgotten children drawing in the dirt beneath the boabab tree… But he fears there is more at stake than his life." (quote from book description)

Based in a region of the world not usually found in Romantic Suspense, it taps into the misery spawned by the power hungry. Tough lives turned into meaningful work. Even when the right thing is as ugly as the wrong. ( )

The premise of the book is great, but the execution of the story didn't work for me. The writing style wasn't my cup of tea, as I found much of it to be too heavy-handed. Several scenes were laid out with too much detail, too much deliberateness, which I found to be both distracting and tedious. For example: one of the earlier scenes of Sloane eating breakfast -- it was so over-written, I almost stopped reading right then.

My other major gripe is the balance of backstory with present action. In general, I prefer less backstory rather than more, but this book provided hardly any at all. Which is unfortunate because there could have been some really great material there, given the characters' histories. Too much is left awkwardly up the air or coming out from seemingly no where.

To summarize, I like what this book could have been, but not enough to commit to reading the rest of the series. ( )