This review was originally posted on <a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2021/08/20/the-devil-you-know-by-kit-rocha/" target="_blank"> Books of My Heart</a>
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<i>Review copy was received from Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.</i>

The <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/260403-mercenary-librarians" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em><strong>Mercenary Librarians</strong> </em></a>series continues with upping the action and danger a notch.  Now TechnoCorps is cloning children, as well as abducting them.  None of our family group in Atlanta will stand for this.  Each of them went through horrors as a child and are unwilling to have more children affected.  Much of the world setup like the history of the women and the Silver Devils and TechnoCorp happened in the first book, <strong> Deal with the Devil.</strong>   I won't repeat that here.  You need to read these books in order.

<strong>The Devil You Know</strong> is made more suspenseful by the couple in the developing romance.  Most of our view is from Maya, who has an eidetic memory on steroids.  Gray is the second to Knox on the Silver Devils team, but he is dealing with his implant rejecting.  Maya has always thought she would hurt herself with too much sensory input.  She learns to handle it and use it with Gray.  I love how we get so much of Maya and Gray's background history.

Ava shows up with more help for the group and agrees to stay a bit for her sister, Nina. The group continues to share food and medical help, and informational books, and seeds and gardening books, and fixit help for mechanical devices. They are much more than a library of books but also a library of knowledge sharing and services. We also get a wider view of the players in and out of Atlanta like Jared Montgomery and Savitri.   Neither of them like the child abductions or cloning.

In the process of trying to track the children, they expose themselves to their worst enemy at TechnoCorp.  I was on the edge and frightened for what would happen to them.  At the same time, Gray is near death from his implant.  I love how Maya learns to trust herself and her capabilities to save the children and the man she loves.     The last chapter has a tease of the aftermath and makes me think next up are Rafe and Dani in <strong>Dance with the Devil</strong>.  I can't wait.

<blockquote>He flexed his fingers, then tried to curl them into a fist. It didn't work perfectly, which was perversely what convinced him he was definitely alive.  Imperfection was a realm reserved for the living.</blockquote>
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I received an advanced copy from Tor in exchange for an honest review.

Ohhh this series continues to hit all my sweet spots as a reader and a librarian. Super-smart soldiers and mental superheroes? Community-focused librarians? A scanner that can scan a book without opening it? SIGN ME THE HELL UP.

While in the first book we followed Nina, the super-soldier librarian with a heart of gold, in this it's Maya, a former data courier with a memory like a steel trap (literally). She remembers everything she's heard or read, and her brain sometimes seems like it'll shut down from the amount of input she constantly handles. She's drawn to Gray, one of the supposedly-dead Silver Devils squad that's moved into the neighboring warehouse. Between his voice and his eyes, Maya finds it too easy to lose herself and her boundaries in him even when there's feet between them.

In the second installment of the Mercenary Librarians, the two teams have begun working together, and it opens with them attempting to rescue children from a future like the one planned for them: fighting for TechCorps and obeying orders unquestionably, only to be killed at the end of their usefulness. When the hit goes wrong and someone's shot, Maya realizes she has to improve her training, and Grey takes her on. Frightened of how she feels about him and how it can hurt her, Maya can't help but return over and over again. And Gray knows he has a ticking bomb in his body as his implant chip is slowly being rejected, leading to certain death. As the librarians and the devils try to scour out the plots to steal children, Gray and Maya must also look at what they might have and what they might lose together.

Y'all, I think I'm in love with Maya. I love a good nerd who finally recognizes her power, and Maya's got it in spades. This was the community-focused read I needed after 18 months of people refuse to do the least to save their neighbor.

This is book two in the Mercenary Librarians series. While book one was quite fast paced and action packed this book has a much slower pace. But I loved it just as much as the first book. Maya is a really interesting character; the way she uses and accesses her identic memory is fascinating to read. Gray is a wonderful counterpoint to her anxious self. I liked that in this book we got more in depth into how the girls help to improve the day-to-day lives of their neighborhood. While this series is titled “mercenary librarians“ it’s basically post apocalyptic Robin Hood’s. My only disappointment is that we have to wait a year for the final installment, because I need to read it NOW!

Thank you to NetGalley & Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this advanced reader copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I'll full disclosure this: I wanted to love the first book, and I didn't. I really enjoyed it, but I thought there was a lot of worldbuilding, and I wanted to see what happened with the next installment.

Well, the next installment is here, and I absolutely loved this book. It was so different from the first book, it's a slow burn with really strong character building, a really solid plot, and most importantly made me chomp for the next book. I think the best part of this series is the people are just people - ok fine, heavily modified, genetic war type people, but still. I don't love that it's called mercenary librarians, because that to me is the least interesting part of what they do, but what a fun next book in what's shaping up to be an excellent series - brilliant writing to boot!

I got a copy of the ARC for an honest review.

It's unusual that a sequel to a book is better than the first one, but this fast paced, well-plotted book mega the criteria! With the world-building established in Deal With the Devo, the authors give us more action, with a slow burn romance between Maya and Gray occurring while people are trying to survive a dystopian society.

A very enjoyable, interesting Science Fiction Romance Dystopian Read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me an Advanced Readers Copy.

The Devil You Know is the second novel in Kit Rocha's Mercenary Librarians series, which is everything that you might imagine – and so much more! This second novel in the series switches perspectives, allowing us to know other team members better.

Maya is a woman on the run, though you wouldn't know it from the looks of her. By all appearances, she is calm and comfortable in the environment she and her little family have made for each other. Yet it's hard to forget that she's a genetically engineered genius – one that TechCorps would do anything to get back.

Then there's Gray. Thanks to the events of the previous novel, he's finally free of the Protectorate. But he doesn't feel free. Perhaps that's because he knows he only has a short period of time before his body begins to fail him – thanks to what the Protectorate did to him.

"Mozart was the perfect music for a heist."

I had not realized how excited I was for the next installment in this series. Not until it was in my hands, at least. Now I know that I have been waiting all year for The Devil You Know. So, did it live up to that hype? You better believe it!

I'll confess that I am still charmed by the whole concept of mercenary librarians. I thought that Nina would remain my favorite, as the person in charge of the whole organization. Now I realize how much I adore Maya. Not only is she a spark of life in this series, but she plays a pivotal role in how their whole operation works.

In other words, she's really the reason the library works as well as it does, and that is enough of a reason for me to love her. Everything about her character is perfectly complemented by Gray. I love the juxtaposition between their chapters and personalities.

This novel answered many questions for me while making me fall further in love with the world and characters. I love that we've been consistently getting multiple POVs for each novel, and I hope that continues in whatever happens next.

On that note, I sincerely can't wait for the next novel! I know, it's a long way off. But I'm already excited. Can you blame me?

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for an arc of this book. I have been a fan of these writing duo since discovering their Beyond series in 2016, so when I saw this arc available I couldn't pass by. I haven't read the first book, Deal with the Devil, but enough information was woven into the story for me to be able to understand the setting and characters.


Whilst I definitely enjoyed this book, it seemed to lack the same emotional punch that their prior work had. Whilst I loved the storytelling of this dystopian romantic suspense, there were a few elements that detracted from my overall enjoyment, one of which was that the pace felt very slow. The story frequently lacked energy, I could put it down after a few chapters and not be desperate to jump back into the story. The major issue was that there was simply too much happening in the story, resulting in no clear focal point.


Was the story about Maya and Gray? About Dani and Rafe? Was it about Rainbow? The missing children? The return of (view spoiler)? Gray's malfunctioning implant? Maya's possible overload issues? I don't mind a good sub-plot or two that enhance the main story, but here it felt as though they were all competing for top spot. And there were just so many that we jumped haphazardly from one problem to another but it often felt as though no headway was being made on ANY of them.


There were also too many different points of view, whilst I really liked Maya and Grey it took me far too long to "feel" their connection to one another. Maybe my expectations for this book were just too high, maybe my reading tastes have changed or perhaps it just wasn't as good as previous books. That said, the plotting is impressive, foreshadowing is cleverly designed to raise more questions than answers. Secrets are revealed that only generate more mystery and throw another problem into the mix. One thing I did love were the Maya/Gray scenes, both characters were incredibly easy to care for and had they remained a clear focus of the book, as should have been the case since it's a romance, this could easily have been a 4 or even 5 star read for me.

This is the second free-standing novel of the Mercenary Librarians series.
In this book we get to know Maya and Grey more as their relationship evolves. People we thought were lost appears and both an internal and external danger seems to be about to unleash chaos.
I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first one but it still is a very good read. The romance between Maya and Grey is beautiful and the fights are thrilling.
I’m excited to see what new Kit Rocha can give us in the next instalment of the Mercenary Librarians.

Another great edition to the badass librarians of the future series. I'm really loving the combination of dystopia, suspense and romance.

I looooved this one, almost as much as the first. This is one of my favorite found families I've ever read in a book. Their banter and relationships are AMAZING. I highlighted so many interactions. I can't wait for the next book (and I really, really hope there's gonna be more than 3!)

This was one of my most anticipated books. I loved book one and was looking forward to this. I must say I do have mixed feelings though. While I loved all these characters, and Maya and Gray’s relationship, I felt like there were just too many POVs here!

Now I’m used to Kit Rocha books having POV of the characters, other than the MCs, to set up for the book to follow, and who the MCs would be for that. But there were a bunch of other characters that had their own POVs here other than Maya and Gray and Dani and Rafe (who I’m assuming are book 3???). It distracted from the main romance in my opinion. Why did we need we really need a POV for Nina, Knox, (redacted), (redacted) and (redacted)???

There's a POV at the end that isn't Maya or Gray and I'll accept we needed that one for the LE GASP ending

While Maya absolutely was an amazing character and her and Gray’s story was a lil heart-breaking for reasons that eventually worked out cuz we got the HEA, it still felt like we didn’t need to also get into allll these other characters heads. While that was great for making the book read like a cool, multi ensemble cast action movie/series it still took away some of the shine of the MCs.

And just like the previous book once again Dani and Rafe are kinda stealing the show for me??? I looove a feral female character who will literally stab someone, and maybe even her love interest lol. So I’m super excited for their book.

So to sum up: Maya's mind? Amazing. Gray, brooding excellence. All these extra POVs? Could've gotten rid of most of those… THAT ENDING?? Makes me want book 3 now!

A perfect blend of action and romance in this future dystopian society. Super soldier Gray has a failing implant that’s threatening his life. Maya is slowly learning the truth of her auditory enhancements and starting to trust in her abilities and herself. Author team Kit Rocha does a fantastic job of character development while continuing the over-arching plot to keep this fast paced action series interesting. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

This is such a fun and entertaining read! There is perhaps a tad less action and fighting in this one than the first, but it is still full of heart and steamy romance, along with great characters and a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

As with the first book almost all of the characters have a chapter or two from their perspectives, but there are two characters who are the focus of the romance and so they carry the majority of the narration. In this story we hear from Maya and Gray. I was very happy that this book focused on these two as they were my favorites from book one. Maya was genetically enhanced to have a memory superior to normal humans. She remembers everything like it just happened. Gray was modified to have super strength and is an incredible marksman. But personality wise, they are both the sweetest and the most insecure of the group. Their romance was just so sweet and wonderful, that I was smiling when ever the two of the were together.

All of the characters from the first book are here in the second one and it is such fun to see these two groups working together to help not just each other but the community at large. They’re there to help anyone who needs it, and not always by using force or their knowledge of killing and fighting, but sometimes it is just by providing food, books and medical help.

The thing that really sells this series is the found families and the sense of community amongst the Librarians and the Silver Devils, and the people surrounding them. This is a New Orleans like no other with a governing body that has corporate greed at its center. I love watching this group get back at the Protectorate and prove once again that morals and kindness do count.

This is a spin off series though, so as with the first book, I still felt at times that I was missing something. This was mostly when there were little memos that came from the Protectorate and had to do with things that I didn’t completely understand. But this may have more to do with the fact that they often referred to the characters in the story with their number designations and I couldn’t keep those straight, so I was often at a loss as to who they were referring to. But this was definitely a minor issue and did not detract from the story as a whole.

I just love the mix of steamy romance with a dystopian setting! All of the characters are truly great and are fun to spend time with. There is definitely a little bit of everything in these books, action, romance and a found family that is just adorable with their love for each other.

Unpopular opinion: I liked this book less than the first book in the series.

I was disappointed that the first book didn't have more of the mercenary librarians; I mean, books, printing, acquiring books by shooting your way through whatever enemy lines might try to stop them.

If you are looking for a romance story set in a dystopian USA, go for it. But it was not my cup of tea.

There aren’t many dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels that have the right amount of romance to satisfy me. But this amazing series by Kit Rocha provides me with everything I’m looking for. The balance between action, romance and suspense is perfect. And especially the characters play a big part in making me love this series.

Maya and Gray are the main characters in The Devil You Know. Maya is a data courier, which means she remembers everything she ever seen or heard. Which has it good and bad sides. One particular bad guy would love to pick her brains and discover all the secrets she holds. Gray is a one of the best snipers, however he’s having pretty extreme health problems. I really enjoyed seeing Maya and Gray grow closer together. Their relationship was very special and I loved the scenes that was just the two of them.

If you’ve read the previous book you know that Maya’s and Gray’s group are now working together. In this book they discover something and they can’t turn a blind eye and start a rescue mission. However, it’s very secret so they need to meet with all their contacts to get information. We meet old and new characters in this book and I loved the intricate world-building and great plot that Kit Rocha have come up with again. I have fallen even more in love with the characters in this book and can’t wait to see what will happen next. I’m pretty vague in this review because I don’t want to spoil anything.

I have been so impressed by this writing duo and this book didn’t disappoint. I adore that it is set in a dystopian world were ordinary people are fighting to simply survive and yes often that’s in spite of the big , greedy tech giant in charge. Maya was a huge part of that, she’s now just quietly helping those who need it but with the recent arrival of an elite team on the run Maya’s focus is suddenly very confused. She trusts Nina and knows that she has no doubt about the guys but can Maya trust herself as her past comes charging back to haunt her ?
Ok if you have read the Beyond series then you full well know that the creative endeavours here are raw, visceral and unafraid to be brutally honest. This particular book is a romance between Maya and Grey but I loved that diversity was a part of it. Nothing is thrust down an unsuspecting readers throat but characters who are perhaps unconventional or even downright upfront about their sexuality appear adding richness without taking up story.
This mainly was about Maya coming to terms with everything that she could possibly be . I particularly liked seeing Ava start to feel and yes I do believe that she can ! Grey has his own issues, not to mention a blast from the past but my lips are sealed. I thoroughly enjoyed being back in this world and although the romance wasn’t particularly as intense as I wanted this book was definitely a page turner and I am already desperate to get back to this world.
This voluntary take is of a copy I requested from Netgalley and my thoughts and comments are honest and I believe fair

Do you want to read a story where the bad guy actually suffers consequences? Read this book.
Do you want to read a story where a group of genetically altered and very smart super soldiers work together to improve the life of their neighbors? Read this book.
Do you want to read a slow-burn romance? Read this book.
Do you want to read a story where consent is sexy AF? Read this book.
Do you want to read a story that contains found-family, references to quantum physics, and industrial strength food dehydrators? Read this book.

Fans of The Beyond Series should read this book for the well buried Easter Egg.

I guess what I am trying to say is READ THIS BOOK.

Note to Tor: I need more stories in this post apocalyptic dystopian world of Atlanta.

ARC review copy via NetGalley

Kit Rocha’s pragmatic, chaotic optimists have gotten me through the last few years. I’m going to need a bunch of you to buy Deal With the Devil and The Devil You Know, or request that your library buy them, so that I get more of these post-apocalyptic do-gooding murder ladies and sourdough making supersoldier daddies to help me hold onto hope amid the rising tide of authoritarianism, the crumbling wall between church and state, and the increased concentration of wealth into a few hands. I find myself attracted to books where the characters must struggle for the right to make their own choices and determine their own futures, and the protagonists survive and thrive. I’ve reread Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries, and Kit Rocha’s books on a constant loop because they articulate my anxieties and then give me the inspiration to keep fighting. If I were a trope, I would be the grumpy one and this book would be the sunshine one.

The Mercenary Librarians do more than make sure their community gets books, education, entertainment, and a safe place to go during times of need and extreme weather. They also save children being trafficked, give people alternatives to being ground under the heel of corporations, and will sit on you until you choose hope over despair. TechCorps and the other corporate entities that control the East Coast in the post-apocalypse want to make themselves the only choice for survival. A desperate, dependent populace is more likely to allow TechCorps to modify them to best suit TechCorps needs. The Mercenary Librarians are working to provide options, to give people the freedom to make choices and be human beings, not malleable, replaceable resources.

Deal With the Devil established the outline of this found family. Like a sexy superpowered Brady Bunch, Nina and Knox’s blended family can do more good together than they could alone. Nina is the heart of the group, the love that binds everyone together. Knox and the Silver Devils have taken to domesticity like a duck who can kill you 10 ways takes to water. One of the great joys of reading Kit Rocha is that the books build on one another. Though the focus may shift to other characters, the world, the family, and the community are integral to the story. Characters adopted into the family in this book will continue to grow and develop through subsequent books.

Maya doesn’t have the physical abilities of the others, but she holds her own among the murder ladies and supersoldiers. Her enhanced brain means she remembers everything she hears, reads, learns, experiences. Sensory overload is a danger for her, but she’s learned to live life and take care of herself. Grey is dying. As the Silver Devils sniper, he is used to keeping a distance and watching the action. Grey wants to use the time he has remaining with Maya and making sure she is safer when he is no longer there to protect her. Grey’s impending death acts as a catalyst for two very careful people to take chances. The romance is slow, careful, and sweet. There are no big betrayals, only a recalibration of expectations.

The Devil You Know is not as adventure heavy as Deal With the Devil. It feels like the turning point though. Maya has thought of herself as a refugee, fighting to make a bright corner in an overlooked part of Atlanta. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that bigger changes need to happen and the Mercenary Librarians will be at the heart of it.

I've been a Kit Rocha fan since the beginning, and this book not only has everything I love about their work, but is even better than the first book in the series. I've always been there for the plot and dystopian worldbuilding as much as the romance--and all the sex!--with their books, and this one strikes a perfect balance between the two. I can't wait for Dani and Rafe's book, and really hope the series gets picked up beyond the first trilogy because I'm also dying for Ava's story.

This is a great follow up to Deal with the Devil--same great humor, fun and smart action. The world-building is still fascinating, including glimpses of the community the librarians are building early in the book. It’s the total package and I’m looking forward to seeing the series grow!