Last Hope by Jessica Clare, Jen Frederick Series: Hitman,
Published by Berkley Publication Date: September 29th 2015
Pages: 336
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In the explosive new Hitman novel from the bestselling authors of Last Kiss and Last Hit a jungle mercenary and a female target find love on the run...
Mendoza: I grew up in the slums and lost everything I loved to poverty, illness, and death. I had only one skill to leverage myself out of my circumstances—violence. Being hired out as a mercenary hitman brought me money and built an empire. I’m the king, owner of an entire island, leader and protector of people. But I’m alone, and alone I must remain—because of my terrible scars and secret shame. My next job: Bring down a rival hiding in the Amazon. Find my target. Destroy it. But then, I meet her.
Ava: Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m famous for having bad luck. Karma hates me, and when the day job got ugly, I figured I could use a vacation. I should have known that bad luck tends to cling. So there’s no way I’m surprised that my plane was shot out of the sky. That I survived a crash-landing was a sweet twist. My jungle rescuer isn’t so bad either. Hot, sexy, dangerous—Mendoza’s just what the libido ordered. The thing is, he says I wasn’t some unlucky part of a larger plot. In fact, I was the target. So what does he know that I don’t know? I guess I’m going to find out. If I have to be on the run with someone, I could do much worse than Mendoza. Now if I could only get the stubborn man to touch me…
Cocktails and Books received this book for free from Galley Sites, NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect our opinion of the book or the content of our review.
Here is a story about Rafe a mercenary who is following Ava who is in Peru trying to save her best friend. Ava’s friend was dating a known international criminal kidnapped her and now Ava is being blacked mailed into being a mole for the organization. Rafe is following Ava because a member of his team is being held by the US government until Rafe and his team find the information that Ava has. Rafe and Ava end up in a plane crash together and need each to survive the Amazon jungles with no rescue in sight and just each other.
Overall sounds like an interesting story and I was excited to read it, unfortunately I just didn’t find it so. I think that the story when it started had promise, alpha male hired to track beautiful girl one thing leads to another and things happen. There was some over the top concepts and implications both for Ava and especially for Rafe that just didn’t work for me. The writing was also over the top with the two main characters in compromising circumstances that just didn’t make sense to me as a reader. Everything from how they survive the jungle to how they were rescued to the ending of the book didn’t work. Also Rafe’s back story is unbelievable and unrealistic; I as a reviewer understand that there is a level of fantasy that comes with the types of books we read – but to have almost zero realism I have a hard time with. Especially when the hero is a 35 year old alpha male who’s job is to get the bad guys.
I don’t want to give anything away, you as the reader need to come to your own conclusions. As a reviewer I unfortunately cannot recommend this book, I wish I could.
