You Only Die Twice, Brynn Kelly

I honestly expected not to finish this — anytime there’s a hot pink cartoon cover, I figure I’m in for a cotton candy fluff piece, probably with lots of hot and heavy sex scenes or at least some serious innuendos right up front. I picked this up anyway only because it was free on Audible, I was out of credits for the month, and the title was clever enough to give it a shot.

I was very pleasantly surprised–so much so that I think the author should seriously rethink her cover artist, as it probably attracts the wrong crowd and those who might actually like this book will never give it a try.

Alice is a middle school teacher who recently self-published a novel with her late co-author, a Russian woman whom she knew for only a few months before she passed away from cancer. The co-author had the plot idea involving international espionage, but toward the end of her illness, she became so incoherent that Alice had to finish the book for her, not knowing how Nika actually intended for it to end. She publishes in obscurity, until one day a man who matches the description of their superspy main character point-for-point shows up in her school, and more or less kidnaps her. Turns out, the story wasn’t fiction–and Alice changed the ending, to make him (Carter) a murderer. The right (wrong?) people found a copy of the book, and now are hunting him, based on the evidence in the book.

There is of course a romance that develops between Alice and Carter, and there are a few sex scenes, but they are the fade-to-black type, and not gratuitous. That’s also not the main plot of the story; rather, Carter and Alice are trying to figure out what really happened, and what Nika knew. Meanwhile, Alice’s sister is dying of cancer, too–in fact, everyone in Alice’s immediate family has already died of a particularly aggressive genetic form of colon cancer. Ordinarily this alone would have been grim enough to make me stop reading, yet somehow it was handled with such humor (yes, humor, oddly enough) and lightheartedness, without being insensitive, that I somehow didn’t mind it in this particular book.

All in all, a fun read!

My rating: ****

Language: yep. It was there. Could have been worse, but definitely there.

Violence: this part wasn’t too gratuitous. Present but only as much as the subject matter required

Sexual content: present and steamier than I would have liked, but it fades to black pretty quickly

Political content: I think there was a bit of that here and there too but I can’t recall specific instances so it must not have been too cringe-worthy

The post You Only Die Twice, Brynn Kelly appeared first on C.A. Gray.