I really find myself gravitating toward characters who have gone through tough times and sincerely want to change. Callie Byrne is this type of person, she has overcome drug addiction, time in the military in Iraq that traumatized her and the loss of custody of her son. Callie now has a job, is clean and wants to do what it takes to get her son back.
Callie receives a disturbing letter from her friend Rachel and winds up in Guatemala dealing with people and situations that are dark, disturbing, illegal and at times deadly. Callie tries her best to help those she encounters in need so she can then return home to her son. The story moved along at a fast pace and the author did a great job developing characters. I love when I can “see” a character which pretty much stops me from watching books made into movies. If the actor doesn’t look like my picture, I am totally disappointed! (Personal problem for me to try and overcome.)
Thanks to Johnnie Dun, AuthorBuzz and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review. I will definitely be looking for his next book.

well written novel about a world weary Iraq veteran and the steps she attempts to rebuild her life after poor choices. In attempting to regain her integrity she becomes involved in a human trafficking nightmare. All too real.

Callie Byrne is an Iraq war vet, former MP, recovering drug addict and suicide attempt survivor working to get her life together enough to regain custody of her son. When her friend and fellow MP veteran sends her some computer files and request for help from Guatemala, Callie balks, but knows she has to go and help. She quickly finds herself in the middle of a drug cartel and human trafficking ring that seems to be imploding as key players are turning against each other.

This is the first novel by Johnnie Dun. The first half had a few slow spots, and there was an abstract feel throughout. The characters were compelling, particularly Callie Byrne and the complicated, compromised, unpredictable, and even by the end of he book hardly understood John Slinger. The plot was also solid, unpredictable, and finished with the emergency abated but certainly no resolution for Callie and her unlikely allies.

This book was all I hoped for and more. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Loved the writing, loved the characters and loved the story.

I received this book courtesy of NetGalley and Pearly Baker Press, the publisher.

In this book Callie Byrne, an ex-MP who served in Iraq, and experienced PTSD. She was in rehab from painkillers; basically, her life a mess. She is a divorcee who is unable to care for her child.

When her high school friend, Rachel, goes to Guatemala and leaves Callie a note in case she goes missing, Callie takes a trip with Angus. The book is about murder, sex trafficking, and drug cartel. Callie uncovers who is involved in these illegal activities. It is Callie’s journey to get the crooks put away and to protect her son and sister, who is caring for him.

The book moves quickly and you find yourself rooting for Callie throughout the book; but, at times, I found myself wondering how an ex-MP would do some of the things she does. For example, when Callie allows herself to be put in a dangerous situation with girls transported in a container. It seems like there should be a better way especially since the girl-filled container never made it to catch Hector.

It is a light, easy read if you enjoy this genre of book.

I tried my best to connect with this story on any level and did not find anything to make it memorable. I found myself loosing interest and having to backtrack to pick up details I missed.

I'm a sucker for flawed characters and that's exactly what Callie Byrne is--ex heroin addict, Iraqi vet, street savvy, and acerbic witted. Fighting her past with shady drug dealers, she is determined to live a clean life and reclaim her young son, Dillon who is living with her mother and sister as Callie is homeless. But when her friend, Rachel reaches out to her for help, Callie knows she must step in and once again cross tracks with her ex, Tony and his shady gangster accomplices. Her journey takes her to Guatemala where she runs head on into the sex-trafficking and heroin smuggling business as she attempts to rectify past mistakes and prevent anyone else from getting hurt. Lots of violence and breakneck pacing make this novel perfect if you like the roller-coaster ride of gang-banging, kick-ass female protagonists!

Really wish we could delete books that we don't like enough to finish.

This book was fantastic. I loved Callie and Ixchel. Backstrap is a great read and I look forward to more books from Johnnie Dun

An interesting book, some curious characters and some horrifying abuses. Sometimes the things we are afraid happen to others do, and we don't see it. There is corporate greed and moral corruption, innocent and caring people sacrificed on the altar of money.

A woman loses her friend and in the search uncovers a vast and terrible conspiracy. Having to leave her child behind with a sister she is not sure she trusts complicated the matter. Stolen babies, drug trafficking, and abuse force her to make some challenging choices for herself, and in the end, she makes the tough ones.

A little hard to read because of all the horror, but a good read.

Callie and Angus were just not for me. The whole EX-IRAQI vet heroin addict do-gooder thing just didn't hold me, sorry

Callie is a messed up young woman recovering from rehab trying to rebuild her life working as a barmaid so to get back the son that she loves. Being brought up in a broken family and then joining the army as a means to escape she ends up a Vet traumatised by war seeking escape using drugs, making a bad marriage and becoming divorced with a child. She has a married sister who is taking care of her child and few friends. She does have two close friends who are old comrades in arms. When one of them, Rachel who seems to be in trouble in Guatemala needs help, reluctantly she has to respond. Once there she finds Rachel has disappeared. When finding Rachel dead and seeking answers she becomes cocooned in a world of warring criminal factions ,drugs and the white slave trade she finds herself trapped. How she has to overcomes the demons within and without to survive, bring justice for her friends murder, help friends made along the way to escape, bring retribution to those involved and find her own salvation makes a most engrossing and exciting story.

Rating: WARTY!

This review is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This novel started out quite interestingly, but by the fifty percent mark I was bored, and it never showed any sign of improving. The problem was that the novel had hit the doldrums and for fully the middle fifty percent of it, it moved not an inch forwards nor looked like it was interested in doing so. I had to quit it at about 72% because I was getting nothing from it, and life is far too short to 'stick it out' with a novel that simply isn't thrilling you.

The plot here is that Callie Byrne, a US Army veteran, having served in the military police in Iraq, is moved to visit Guatemala, in search of an army buddy named Rachel, who has gone down there on behalf of a drug dealer named Tony. Tony is Callie's old drug dealer, before she started trying hard to go straight for the sake of her son Dillon, who is currently in custody of her strait-laced and well-to-do sister.

So far, so good, but once Callie gets into Guatemala, the story becomes gelled in aspic and quite literally nothing moves. The Iraq vet is also a trope that's being way overdone these days - along with the endless ex-special forces thrillers, and ex-marine thrillers we're seeing far, far too much of these days. Normally I won't read a story like this, but the blurb made this one sound like it might offer something more, when it fact if offered a lot less than even those stories do.

It's truly sad that authors in the count so much on US foreign aggression to help them create interesting characters for their novels. I mean thank the gods for the Middle East wars, because Vietnam was becoming far too long in the tooth. Now we have the same problem, but instead of everyone being a Vietnam vet, everyone has to be an Iraq vet (evidently no one fought in Afghanistan). But even Iraq is too far back in the past now o have young characters being Iraq vets.

We left Iraq in 2011, so even if there had been some eighteen-year-old serving on 2010, they'd be in their mid-twenties now at the very least. That doesn't leave them much time to have a child, garner an addiction, and then a recovery. Let's hope for a new war soon because god knows what we will do if can't call on a recent one! Seriously - why can a person not be simply an armed forces vet without having to have been in a war somewhere? Isn't that enough any more? It's just a little tiresome reading the same background for every character in a story like this.

The biggest problem with this story, though, is that there wasn't a character in it that I liked or felt moved to root for. There was no action at all, and certainly no point when I felt like Callie or her buddy Angus might be in danger or at risk. Frankly, and apart from the opening couple of chapters, Callie never actually felt real to me. It started out well enough, but then she became as bland as the plot, and the more the story went on the less she seemed like a recovering drug addict, and the less she seemed like an army veteran, and the less she seems like a mom concerned about or evne missing her son.

One reason it made for a sad and tedious read was that instead of being the actor, she became the actee - things were being done to Callie. She was not the one doing the things: she was being controlled and moved around; she wasn't acting on her own volition and making things happen, and it made for a very mundane character and a story which didn't particularly make me want to turn the pages.

On a technical note, the novel needs another read-through before it's ready for prime time, because I found several errors in it, none of which were the kind that a spell-checker would find (although a grammar-check might pick up one or two of them. I read, for example, "Was Tony set Rachel up?" which presumably should have read "Was it Tony who set Rachel up?" or "Did Tony set Rachel up?" I also read, "They put up with me because they have too" (too many 'o's in the 'to'. And finally, "Had he really helped cared for Ixchel" (One of those verbs is too tense!).

Then there was this one small section where I think the middle speaker (starting at 'excuse me') should have been someone other than Slinger, because the reading makes no sense if it's all Slinger:

Slinger scowled at Angus. Callie thought Slinger might just shoot Angus right there.
“Excuse me.” Slinger took a soft plantain out of his mouth and crushed it into the floor. Then he sat back and took a drink of coffee. “Bad fruit,” he said.
Slinger didn’t look up, scribbling again in his journal

But aside from those, the writing wasn't technically bad, it just wasn't appealing to me and I can't recommend this novel, although I wish the author all the best with his career.

Callie is a great character; Strong of character even though she's dealing with PTSD having served in Iraq. Good read, good dialogue, good characters.

This book was just not for me. Getting through the pages I read was an effort. Maybe it will work for another reader but just not me.

"She stood on the edge of an old life with no place to go."

Callie Byrne served as an Army MP in Iraq. After she got out of the service she fought the memories and the PTSD with drugs and is now a recovering heroin addict. During this dark time in her life she lost custody of her son, Dillon, to her proper suburban sister and all she wants now is to regain custody of him again.

She's working as a bartender in Philadelphia when she receives a packet from an old friend from her Iraq days and she ends up heading down to Guatemala to try to help her friend.

Drugs, drugs and more drugs, drug cartels, human trafficking, a young Mayan mother that Callie wants to help, deaths, threats of death - this is one dark story.

Callie is trying to do what is right and stay safe so she can get back to her son but circumstances seem to be conspiring against her.

This is a dark, gritty tale of a steamy underworld that most people don't even think about. The author is very good at bringing his characters to life with a minimum of words and his description of this noirish, sinister lifestyle is darn frightening.

Callie ends up having to make a series of difficult decisions - and I sure don't know what I would have done in her place.

I received this book from Pearly Baker Crimes through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

An awesome, suspenseful book! "Backstrap" by Johnnie Dun is full of suspense with an unbelievable plot. Action packed

The main character Callie goes through a lot in this book/ Throughout the book there were many parts that I felt like I was watching it on a big screen. Overall the writing is good and the characters are developed. Would love to see this made into a movie.

Okay, so honestly I don't know how I feel about this book.
But I will say it definitely would make a killer movie with the right cast.
Callie and several of her friends are ex-military. They all served in Iraq together and all made it out alive. But how did one of them manage to get killed while working for Latin Leather, a clothing company. Sure, they had all dabbled in drugs and partied and most of their time after the military was spent in a hazy room with vivid memories.
Turns out Latin Leather isn't just clothing, it's enough drugs to supply an entire company. But they already knew that, so why was Rachel sent to Guatemala for a business meeting?
Did she get in over her head?
Is there more than just drugs involved?
Could they have uncovered a human trafficking ring?
Callie and Angus set off to find out leaving their lives at home behind.

Huge shout out to NetGalley for auto-approving me for this book.
While it wasn't my favorite, it was still a quick read that I did enjoy.

Voice.

I had to think about why this novel just didn't pull me in and keep me. In a synopsis, Callie sounds like a tough heroine, damaged, yes, coming out of rehab, tending bar, missing her son, who is being raised by her oh-so-superior sister in the suburbs. In the opening chapter, the manilla envelope from overseas, from a friend, is the most riveting bribe for the reader to keep reading. Text messages from that bad-news badass, Tony, also keep the intrigue going.

It's not the "unlikable character the author compels us to root for" but the writing style, the tone, that I find off putting. I'll read just about anything, even zombie stories, *if* the narrator's voice is engaging. Especially narrators who can make me laugh, even in the darkest situations.

There are some good insights here, but the back story comes too soon, and the action not soon enough.

I might come back to this, and revise the review accordingly if I find I was wrong to give up too soon, but this comes at a time when I've seen a slew of "literary" thrillers and sci-fi adventures that aren't really literary -- the label seems to be used to excuse a slower paced story.

If I didn't have so many books in my queue (from authors who find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, my blog, and Perihelion Science Fiction), I'd take the time to read and evaluate every NetGalley ARC, but sometimes, I have to weigh it against the number of hours in a day. My new yardstick: if a book reminds me that I could be reading The Brothers Karamazov instead, I'm setting it aside.

I couldn't get into this book. Too much narrative? I read 10% and quit; it just didn't grab me.