by Stephenie Meyer, 2016, Audiobook narrated by Ellen Archer, Hachette Audio

When I started reading this book, I thought it looked promising. It’s about a woman (called Alex for most of the book) who is working for a government agency developing chemicals to be used to torture terrorist suspects to reveal their information. She also administers the chemicals and is always successful in breaking the suspects.

Alex is on the run from her former employers because the government agents have killed her lab partner and are also trying to kill her. The reasons behind this are obscure until later in the book, but she captures a man named Daniel who supposedly has a virus that he plans to unleash on the American population. After torturing Daniel with chemicals for some time, she discovers that he isn’t really a terrorist, and she subsequently falls in love with him. He has a brother Kevin, a former CIA agent who was thought to be dead. Kevin tries to rescue Daniel, but Alex knocks him out with some chemicals. They all decide to band together to fight the government agents who are trying to kill them.

The plot is a bit far-fetched, and the author barely manages to hold it together. In addition, she repeatedly describes the endearments that occur between Alex and Daniel as well as the barbs between Alex and Kevin. By the end of the book, I was fairly sick of all three of them.

The idea for this book has a lot more potential than the end product turns out to be.