My past encounters with Alex Berenson have only been through his well-written series about anti-terrorism operator John Wells. This stand-alone thriller is a really interesting addition to the authorship of Berenson.
The book switches between the mother and father - who both work for intelligence agencies in the US - and their teenage daughter that is abducted from a disco in Barcelona where the family is vacationing on a European road trip. The shift in perspective adds layer upon layer to the plot with jumps back and forth in time and with the picture becoming covered from more angles and thus more complete.
Berenson is a really gifted storyteller, and the pace of the book is generally really good. He loses the fifth star in my review due to some twists to the plot and some character traits that I find a little too unrealistic.
I was very well entertained and look forward to other stand-alone thrillers by Berenson, who seems to have put his Wells series on hold, dedicating his writing energy in recent years on non-fiction work on marihuana and covid vaccines that I personally don't find interesting.

This was a good, twisty thriller. Imagine an FBI agent and an NSA agent, married, whose child goes missing. All of that knowledge but also just parents and a nightmare. Lots of marital issues included. Keeps you on your toes. I recommend this book.

Brian and Rebecca Unsworth have struggled for years on Rebecca's salary as an FBI agent. It has taken a toll on their marriage, and years of bitterness and resentment are hard to overcome. However, things have been looking up since Brian sold his app, so they are going to take their kids to Europe for their twentieth wedding anniversary. Kira has finished her freshman year at Tufts and Tony is in high school and they are both craving some independence. So even though Rebecca is incredibly apprehensive, she agrees to let Kira go to a nightclub one night in Spain. But when Kira doesn't return, Rebecca and Brian are thrown into the middle of a nightmare in which someone has kidnapped their daughter. The Unsworths are desperate to get her back and will do anything to make it happen. Will they get Kira back and will their marriage survive the biggest challenge of their twenty-year marriage?



The Power Couple is one heck of a thrill ride about two government employees and the temptations caused by greed. The story is narrated from Rebecca and Kira's perspective at first, but then about halfway through Brian starts to narrate, as well. It is very clear that the Unsworth's do not have the best marriage, with both of them contributing to the animosity that has built up over twenty years. I can see both sides of the story but empathized more with Rebecca. And of course Kira. You would think that the book would end with the resolution (good or bad) of Kira's kidnapping, but that is not the case at all. - CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS



Bottom Line - The Power Couple is an exciting thriller with twists so subtle you may miss the breadcrumbs if you aren't paying attention. But don't worry if you miss them, it will make the twists so much more thrilling at the end.



Details:

The Power Couple by Alex Berenson
On Twitter
Pages: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 2.9.2021
Buy it Here!
Thank you to NetGalley for the book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this novel and did not see many of the plot twists coming. I am grateful for the opportunity to read it!

While on a family trip celebrating their wedding anniversary, an FBI agents daughter was kidnapped. The book alternates between the parents perspective and the daughters. I did not like one of the characters at all, other than that I thought the book was an exciting read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the review e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is the first book I have read from this author and it was phenomenal. This book starts off with a bang and the punches just keep on coming. I love the background that we get for both Rebecca and Brian. Getting to see how their lives played out from the times they met each other as well as getting a little bit of their background on how they grew up really makes for an interesting concept to where you really get to know the character as whole. Sprinkle that with Kira and her sense of self-preservation and sharp thinking, this made for one fast-paced thriller. Then just when you think you've had all you can handle.....we are graced with part 6. The deceit and treachery was just....**chef's kiss**. This was a solid 5 star thriller that I highly recommend.

A big thriller turn off for me is when the government gets involved so once it got to that point I checked out. I finished it but I was doing it because I was already about 100 pages in when I figured out what path the book was taking.

To each his own, bit government thrillers are not my thing.

I had mixed feelings. I thought this was a fairly predictable and seemed like the movie "Taken" I didn't love it or hate it, just found it to be mediocre

I've read several books by this author and have always enjoyed everything I've read, so I was looking forward to reading this book. I must say it didn't disappoint. This book was easy to read and fast paced and kept me wanting to read more. I highly recommend this book.

The Power Couple
By Alex Berenson
Published Feb. 9 2021

This author is not one I particularly read but I thought I'd try it this time. Honestly, I was a little disappointed.
The book seemed wordy with many flashbacks of the couple's life. I probably would have stopped reading... but the ending was so good I am glad I didn't.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.

3star

Alex Berenson has done it again! I first read his work when I found a galley for The Prisoner, the eleventh in his John Wells series. When I saw that this stand alone thriller was available, I jumped on it. My thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. The Power Couple is a fast read and a fun one, and I recommend it to you.

Rebecca (call her Becks) and Brian Unsworth are type A achievers, and both work for the federal government; she is a spy, and he is a hacker. But like so many couples, the similarities that brought them together are getting in their way now. With their children, Kira, who is nineteen, and Tony, who is younger, they take off for Europe to let off steam and spend quality time together. Maybe.

Early in the story, Kira is abducted, and from there forward, the pacing is perfect. Now and then Berenson pulls us back a bit as he shares sketches from their pasts that lead up to this event, but each reminiscence is brief, and the shift between points of view and time periods adds to the suspense. We see their lives through the perspectives of all except Tony, who is a minor character. In the end, Kira is the one we like best. (Trust me.) There’s not a lot of character development, but this isn’t that kind of novel.

I don’t want to give more away, because if I kill any surprises, you won’t enjoy the story as much; what I will say is that even if your own marriage is less than perfect, it is a shining beacon of integrity and affection when contrasted with that of the Unsworths.

This book is for sale now, and just right to take on vacation with you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this copy of The Power Couple by Alex Berenson.

The Power Couple tells the story of Becks and Bri, married to each other with teenagers. Rebecca, or Becks, is a high-powered FBI agent and Brian, or Bri, works for the NSA. Both work on the inside of the government but that doesn't stop their teenaged daughter from disappearing from their family vacation in Barcelona. While they race around a foreign city desperately trying to find their daughter we hear from the missing girl herself as she tries to find a way to escape her captors. Even as they search for their daughter together the cracks in their marriage begin to widen and split apart until questions come up that neither one of them wants to answer.

The Power Couple was very well-written, using the perspectives of the three of the four main characters to tell the story from differnt points of view. Berenson does a great job of using different styles of speaking for each character, creating distinct voices that tell different sides of the same story. This was very close to five stars for me except that the ending felt a little rushed compared to the rest of the book. Otherwise, this was a fantastic read!

Having read all of Berenson's John Wells books, I was curious to se what his latest book outside the series would be like. White it was entertaining and fast paced, it lacked the sense of depth that the Wells book possess, given they are thrillers. All in all, just okay for me.

Let me preface this by saying I LOVED the beginning of this book!! It was engaging and I raced through super quickly...until I didn’t want to anymore.
The twists and turns got so intertwined between counter terrorism, app creation, Russians, etc.
I actually didn’t like any of the characters much— they were all untrustworthy and made the oddest of decisions in all situations.
I loved the thriller part, less the espionage part which ultimately was a failure considering they had this elaborate plot to only see it fall through in such an easy way.

Overall, I gave it 5 stars for the first half, 3 for the second.

This one drew me in from the beginning. Kira, the daughter of an FBI agent and NSA employee is kidnapped while on a family vacation in Spain. Off we are on the trip to get her back and it doesn't let up for a minute. We see the backstory of their lives and marriage - careers, parenthood, love and lies. I couldn't put it down.

Title: The Power Couple
Author: Alex Berenson
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Content Rating: 18+
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Contemporary Fiction
Published: February 9, 2021, by Simon Schuster


Alex Berenson gives us a fast-paced, well-written edge of your seat book that will have you wondering what secrets your spouse is keeping from you. The Power Couple is the first book by this author that I have read, and I will go back for more. I found The Power Couple hard to categorize this book; it is a domestic thriller, with some international espionage thrown in the mix. But I will not worry about giving it a label; plain and simple, it's a fun book to read.

The story is told by the two main characters who make up "The Power Couple," Rebecca and Brian Unsworth. Even their last name describes them perfectly. There are so many secrets, lies, deceit, deception, and jealously between two people who supposedly love each other that it made my head spin. The author did a perfect job in writing these two despicable people. There wasn't one redeeming quality to be found between the two of them. And if you give this book a chance, you will come to love to hate them as much as I did.
The whole idea of this story is centered around Rebecca and Brian, who at one time loved each other. As Rebecca's FBI career becomes more successful, Brian floats along as a stay-at-home dad, they slowly drift apart, becoming resentful of each other. Then Brian lands a job at the NSA and then invents an app that becomes instantaneously successful and earns him a big bonus. To celebrate, they go on a family vacation with their teenage daughter Kira and son Tony. While in Barcelona, Kira goes out clubbing and doesn't come home. This is when things get very interesting, and in my opinion, Kira steals the show. Sorry, that is all I am willing to reveal about the story, no spoilers in this review.
This book was fast-paced, kept my interest throughout, and had a great ending. There are so many twists and turns I didn't see coming, which kept me turning the pages as quickly as possible. So, for me, this was a 4.5-star rating until the very end. The ending for me did the trick, 5-stars for the incredible ending. An added plus was that the author is a man writing two strong female characters. But as I think back about this story, I am not sure who the strong female character is, Rebecca or Kira or maybe both. So, in the end, I enjoyed this book, and I highly recommend The Power Couple.
** I kindly received this galley by way of NetGalley, publisher, and author. I was not contacted, asked, or required to leave a review. I received no compensation, financial or otherwise. I have voluntarily read this book, and this review is my honest opinion. **

Alex Bereson strays from his normal series format to write a standalone book, The Power Couple. The Power Couple has everything. Lies. Intrigue. Betrayal. I couldn't ask for more drama in a book.. not even if I tried. He takes a nice break from writing his John Wells series and I"m so glad he did. This was an excellent standalone. If you're wondering about Alex Berenson, stop! He proves himself time and time again.

This book I struggled with at first. It seemed to take a long way into the book before my attention was really grabbed. I kept reading and finally when the back story of Rebecca began I became hooked. It continued to get even better when Brian’s story was told. Their characters so different while living a life together. The book ended with a storyline that seemed to fit with the characters personalities. It felt like the whole story was leading up to this one part of the book.

This novel had a cleverly crafted plot, was fast paced and was filled with suspense. I was intrigued from the beginning and it definitely kept my interest. Lots of twists and turns.
Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Published by Simon & Schuster on February 9, 2021

Most novels that involve a kidnapped child — “a parent’s worst nightmare,” the blurbs usually say — emphasize parental anxiety. Those novels tend to be intolerably weepy and overly obvious in their manipulation of the reader’s emotions. They also tend to be formulaic. Either a resilient parent or a determined cop, or both acting together, foil the captor just before their child is about to be defiled or murdered, The End.

Alex Berenson gives the kidnapped child novel a new twist. Kira Unsworth is a lucky teen vacationing with her brother and parents in Europe. Rebecca works for the FBI and Brian is a coder for the NSA. Those jobs have decent pay — and they need it, the way Rebecca burns through money to signal her social status — but their financial security came from the two million dollars that Brian made, out of the blue, by developing and selling a gambling app.

Kira meets a young stud in a bar in Paris, then agrees to meet him again the next evening in a bar in Barcelona. She thinks she is being careful during her drinking and dancing spree, but she ends up being kidnapped. Her frantic parents use their law enforcement pull to get the authorities to search for her, but the captors were smooth and didn’t leave behind any obvious clues. Kira frets that she’s not being held for ransom but will be sold to a sheik as a hot American sex toy.

The first half of The Power Couple is interesting but ordinary, somewhat formulaic without making a concerted attempt to tug the reader’s heartstrings. In fact, sympathizing with either of the parents would be difficult, because they are both unlikable. That’s what makes the first half interesting. Rebecca is a workaholic who runs the marriage and (until he made two million bucks) always viewed her husband as being insufficiently ambitious and perhaps a bit slow-witted. Brian probably does lack ambition but he views his wife as an emasculating, power-hungry woman who doesn’t appreciate the contributions he brings to the table. Apart from decent parenting, Brian’s contributions are mostly nonexistent before he contributes money from the app, but that doesn’t stop Brian from resenting his wife for resenting him.

The story changes completely in the second half for reasons that, to avoid spoilers, I won’t discuss. The plot kicks off in a new and much better direction, encouraging the reader to rethink the reason for Kira’s kidnapping. The characters remain unsympathetic, apart from Kira who demonstrates some ass-kicking resilience that she probably inherited from her mother. If anything, her parents become even more unlikable: Brian, because he becomes more callous and self-centered (apart from his apparent love of his kids); and Kira, because (like most thriller cops) she’s quick to abuse her authority when the law gets in her way, and she’s more interested in vengeance than justice.

The novel’s ending is a bit disappointing — it's predictable and anticlimactic — but that doesn’t detract from the better chapters that precede it. This isn’t Alex Berenson’s best book, but the familiar beginning and disappointing ending bookend an entertaining plot that rises above the typical kidnapped child thriller.

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