DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
by Kit Rocha
Tor Books
July 28, 2020
From Goodreads:
Nina is an information broker with a mission–she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America.
Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive.
They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…
Or they could do the impossible: team up.
Thanks to the good people at Tor Books and Raincoast Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book had me with four words: “mercenary librarians,” and “super soldiers.” Nothing after that mattered.
After receiving the ARC, I looked into the author a bit since I had never heard of Kit Rocha before. That’s when I saw Kit Rocha usually writes erotica. That threw me for a loop! I’ve never read erotica and never been interested in reading any. But all of a sudden I start wondering if I’m about to crack open an erotica novel with mercenary librarians doing super soldiers and vice versa. And now that I’ve finished the book, I still don’t know if that’s what I read or not.
It may not sound like it, but that’s a compliment. As someone who has no frame of reference for erotic books, I couldn’t tell you if this qualifies, but I also can’t say that it doesn’t. Sure, there’s sex, but nowhere near what I would have thought would be in an erotic story (again, no frame of reference.) What I know I found was a great story full of action, suspense, and pretty decent characters.
Oddly enough, considering my lack of interest in erotica (and romance) I found I really enjoyed those aspects of this book. The main characters with their back and forth, their longing for each other, mixed with a mistrust for, well… everything, was a a roller-coaster ride that had me burning through pages.
The chapters bounce us around from Nina’s head to Knox’s, and getting to know what she’s thinking, and what he’s thinking, but seeing them unable to connect the dots was maddening. It’s like when the staff of The Office was watching that logo bounce around the tv screen, desperately wanting it to perfectly hit the corner. And then it finally does and everyone cheers. That’s what the relationship felt like.
The plot could have used a little more… something. It was fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I wasn’t bored, but I just wanted a little more. Instead of it being an integrated aspect of the story, it was more or less an excuse for the characters to spend time together and be in a certain place. The stuff that happened could have happened anywhere for a number of reasons. I guess I wanted something that only could have happened in one a specific place because the setting and everything else was so deeply engrained with everything else.
Then again, maybe that’s me expecting too much.
Overall this book was a ton of fun to read. I looked forward to picking it up each time, and if there’s a sequel it will definitely be on my TBR.
