Seconds to Live

An intricately-plotted thriller featuring an FBI RED team (I don't see enough of that in fiction) and a US Marshal. I really enjoyed this more-unique pairing of law enforcement branches and I'm always a sucker for witness protection stories. (Witness protection fascinates me.)

I was expecting a lot more from this book than I got, I think. The first 40% was plagued by multitudes of sentence fragments and unlikely, stilted, or fragmented conversations that often didn't even make sense. However, the second half of the book was better, as though the author finally hit a groove with her characters and they started “living” better. That said, the side characters remained mostly wooden, so I'm leaving the rating at three stars (“good”) despite liking the wrap-up between the MCs more on a “very good” level. Hopefully the other characters will thaw more in the next book, which I definitely plan on reading.

I did have trouble accepting that any Christian would recommend hypnotism as a valid option, and that an FBI person would consider it as any way scientific. Hypnotism is something we shouldn't be playing around with.

Also, I love this cover design! So classy and snappy and portraying the suspense well.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.