Item: Water Memory
Rating: 5.00
Author: bookanonjeff

by Daniel Pyne

A fast-paced, page-turning thriller that contemplates the consequences of motherhood, memory, and crime as a commodity.

Black ops specialist Aubrey Sentro may be one concussion away from death. But when pirates seize the cargo ship she’s on, she must decide whether to risk her life to save her fellow passengers.

Sentro’s training takes over, and she’s able to elude her captors, leaving bodies in her wake. But her problems are just getting started. Her memory lapses are getting more frequent, symptoms of serial-concussion syndrome.

As she plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with the pirates, she pushes herself to survive by focusing on thoughts of her children. She’s never told them what she really does for a living, and now she might not get the chance.

While her memories make her vulnerable, motherhood makes her dangerous.

One Of The More Inventive Kill Shots I've Seen. It was the final fight, killing the final bad guy, so I can't really go into details here because spoilers, but man, that one was fun. As to the rest of the tale, I don't get all the hate on Goodreads for this book. I've read a lot of books across a lot of genres, and I've never seen anything quite like this one. Hell, the only thing that confused me about it is because I thought (from months old memories) that according to the description, I was jumping into a woman waking up on a cargo ship under attack with no memory of who she was or how she got there, but that turned out to be exactly the kind of badass that can - and does - save the day. Instead, while we still got the badass that can and does save the day, we also got a much more nuanced bad ass, with a lot of elements here - hello, sudden lesbian shower sex scene, child kidnapping, stay-at-home-dad, and assassin-with-kids, among others - not usually seen in these types of action tales. The setting, once the book got outside the US around the quarter or so mark, was mostly "Third World Sh*thole" ala most any Far Cry video game, and it actually worked quite well. I for one am very much looking forward to seeing where this series goes, and I'll be starting Book 2 soon (as an ARC). Very much recommended.

Water Memory

by Daniel Pyne

Reviewed by Jeff Sexton on Oct 30, 2021

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