Deal With The Devil by Kit Rocha

A couple of weeks ago, I had the BEST news from NetGalley--approval for an ARC for a book that I was CRAVING.

In 6 B.C-19*, I wrote my first review of a Kit Rocha story.  You can read it here.  It's fair to say I'm a straight-up Kit Rocha Fan Girl.  So you can imagine my response when I found out that I'd been approved for an ARC of the first book of the new Kit Rocha series, Deal With The Devil, in exchange for a review.

It was VERY dignified. *cough* Very.

Deal With The Devil is a Mercenary Librarians novel, and it's set in the same post-apocalyptic timeline that the O'Kane books are set, but the location is different.  So far, there are no character connections, but everyone is dealing with the same "how do we live now that everything is broken" situation.  (There was a nice Easter egg mention of the whisky from Sector Four from their last series, though.)

The Mercenary Librarians are actually quite more benevolent than their name sounds.  They're not hoarding knowledge and texts (remind me to review Rachel Caine's Great Library series soon, would ya?), but they do need to support themselves and help a few neighbors while they're at it.  So when the leader, Nina, gets an offer to go after a rogue Library of Congress bunker, she gathers up her team and heads out with The Silver Devils--a team of elite soldiers formally employed by the local tech giant--despite the possibility that this offer is too good to be true. She wants to save all the knowledge that's been lost and find a way to make is accessible to the people around her.

Garrett, the leader of the Silver Devils, doesn't have quite that altruistic of a goal in mind.  He's actually setting a trap for Nina; he's desperate to trade Nina for another woman who can stop the Silver Devils from dying. Their former tech giant employer has been augmenting its soldiers for years, and once the Silver Devils left the company they were cut off from the upgrades and necessary maintenance to keep their hearts and brains functioning correctly.

So the two teams set off toward the rogue bunker, and have some adventures, and get to know each other better.  And Garrett is in a bind.  He likes Nina, and, oh, man, does he want Nina, but he's about to betray Nina.  So there's interpersonal tension to go along with the post-apocalyptic danger, and there's just a lot of really compelling stuff going on.

Which I liked and will probably love on the re-read.

Why didn't I love it the first time through?

Because I HATE hate hate hate books where the inevitable betrayal is baked into the plot.  While I was all *Kermit arms* about getting the ARC, I also speed read the whole thing like this: 

I mean, I trust Kit Rocha to make everything work out in the end, but Garrett was taking TOO LONG to tell Nina what was going on.  And then there was this TWIST that I did not see coming, and, oh, yeah, Garrett was screwed.  It was also pretty unclear how it was going to all work out in the end.

Because, as I said, there was a lot of really compelling stuff going on.

So, if you want to know how it works out for Nina and Garrett, and you're more comfortable with sturm und drang than I am, you should definitely read Deal With The Devil.  Even if you're wimp like I am, you should read it.  It's good, and finishing it just made me greedy for the next one.

*Six year before COVID-19, or 2014.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Sorry.  No bare-chested man-hunk on the cover of this book.  Carrie seems to have corned the TFA market on testosterone for the month, so I went ahead with another genre.  I know, I know...but this book DOES have quite an array of covers.  See?  


Adding to the colorful cover choices is a lovely cast of characters, headlined by Don Tillman.  Don is a brilliant but socially awkward genetics professor who sets out to find a mate by creating a 16 page survey to administer to prospective candidates.   The search leads him to Rosie (she fails the survey miserably) which leads to a very unlikely friendship.  Don and Rosie team up to find Rosie's biological dad, but also find themselves falling for each other.   This book is sweet, tender and a bit sad.  Don's never had a second date (most likely because he's a 40-year-old man with autism), Rosie is harboring some major anger toward her stepfather (leading her to want to find her biological father) and Don's only go-to-friends for advice are a loveless couple in an open marriage.  Yikes.

The Rosie Project is a story about love where you least expect it; love in seemingly all the wrong places.  It's also story about acceptance and change, which never gets old in my book.  Throw in some science geekiness and a bit of humor and it works.  The Rosie Project isn't a bare-chested man-hunk steamy type of read, but it is worthwhile just the same.