Fabulous plot which I could not put down. Brilliant characters, and twists and turns. Highly recommend to other fans of this genre!!

The book opens with Amelia Sinclair receiving a video of four foreign journalists being kidnapped from their hotel in Damascus. Amelia is now on everyone list as the person to be taken out. They send in agent Gabriel Jets. When the two of them escape a room in Brooklyn Jets starts to wonder why someone else was there as well to take her out. Later when she is able to show him the entire video, he sees the discrepancies that she had seen from the beginning. After having his handler run through the video as well who comes to the same conclusion, you are now sent on an even higher paced and full of action story than what it was at the beginning.
This book is full of espionage and different forces at play. One someone from the Whitehouse, and from somewhere else, so Jets must go dark by letting them think he is nowhere around. This just adds to the story so once you get started you won’t put it down until the end. A very good book.

This book jumps right into and never stops. I read it in just 2 days. There has to be some suspension of disbelief, as is often the case with spy thrillers but it was action packed. The romance piece turned me off a bit but it also added to the development of the motivations of the characters.
I look forward to the next in the series.

I was given a copy from Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Going Dark by Jolene Grace

Amelia Sinclair was once on the front lines as an embedded journalist in one of the Gulf wars. Now, she works for some network covering the UN. One morning, she gets a terrible video clip showing 4 journalists being kidnapped in Syria. They went over there to bag an interview with the current Syrian President.

She takes it to her editor who freaks and drags her off to an apartment of his in Brooklyn to try and look deeper into the clip. He then calls on a source of his, Gabriel Jetts to come in and look it over. Editor wants to get a few burner phones and heads off to a corner market about the same time Jetts arrives via an alley entrance. Loud screams tip off Amelia and Gabriel to the editor being killed on the sidewalk. When they look out the window, a sniper tries to take Amelia out. Jetts and Amelia escape using a fire escape and a wild chase ensues. A chase that jumps around between NYC, Philly, lots of DC locations (including the Oval Office), Syria, Kuwait, and Turkey.

It appears that the abduction is an ISIS attempt at swaying public opinion. But in reality, it’s really just the first step in an attempted coup within the US. The goal was to make the President look weak and open up an avenue for those who truly want the US to stay as the one true megapower to take over.

OK, a coup is an interesting take on the political thriller genre and the premise has promise. For me, the problem in the presentation was that there seemed to be some liberties made with the proverbial space-time continuum as well as with grammar:
1. People seemed to jump back and forth across the Atlantic as though they were using the Enterprise’s transporter. The time and location issues could have been alleviated had the author used day/time/location heading.
2. There are a lot of speaking parts in this drama. Would’ve helped the reader keep up with each if they were identified maybe every 2nd or 3rd chapter. Instead of just saying ‘McKaine’, it might’ve help to occasionally remind the reader that he is the Chief of Staff. Especially for the numerous minor characters.
3. I sure hope the NetGalley copy I had was still a work in progress because there were so many issues with wording, grammar, sentence structure, and general clarity. Especially in the 2nd half of the book. So many that the errors distracted me from being fully vested in the plot.
4. Character development could’ve been fleshed out better with some backstory as to the why behind everyone’s motivation.

All in all, that’s too bad because the premise is pretty good. My best suggestion to the publisher would be to keep the book in the development process and let an experienced editor work with the author to make the story more coherent and readable.

ECD

This is pretty good, not great. It has all the right elements. It just didn't have the polish of more experienced authors. But still better than average. More focus on action than characters, if that's your thing. I hope the author continues to write. 3.5 stars.

I really appreciate te review copy!!