Perfect Shot
Steve Urszenyi
360 pages
Minotaur Books
Published on Nov 14, 2023
🎯🎯🎯
This is the first book in a planned series about former US army medic and sniper turned FBI Special Agent Alex Martel. I was invited to read it by the publisher, and seeing all the high-star reviews and mentions of how badass Alex is, thought it would be right up my alley. I would normally finish this type of thriller within two days, sometimes less, but unfortunately this has taken 16, and even that involved a determined effort to push on to the end, one chapter at a time. It’s not a bad book, just nothing new, and I just wasn’t gripped enough.
Alex Martel has been seconded to Europe to work with Interpol, and finds herself drawn into a political storm, when a mission to intercept a terrorist plot goes wrong. Aided and pursued by the annoyingly charming Caleb of the CIA, who wants her to work for him, she discovers a coded message from an old friend, pointing her towards an even bigger conspiracy.
I wanted to like this more than I did, but I literally found myself putting my kindle down after every chapter so I could check the news or social media, then had to make myself go back to it. Had it not been an ARC I would’ve bailed. It’s a shame, because the story was fine, if predictable, but the pacing was slowed by overly frequent flashbacks and scene changes. Even the action sequences were – I hate to say this of a debut author – boring. The writing is overly descriptive – we don’t need to know every little detail of what fleeting characters are wearing, and the author drops in pretentious words like libation when he means drink or cocktail, which felt out of place in this kind of thriller. Alex was a bit too cocky for me as a heroine, so while a lot of the issues I’ve raised are fixable with better editing, I would probably pass on the sequel. 2.5 rounded up because the last quarter does speed up.
Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the ARC. I am posting this honest review voluntarily.
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