Books & Spoons Review for TOUGH JUSTICE COUNTDOWN PART 4 by Emmy Curtis

4/2/2017

Part 4 of 8: an explosive new installment in the thrilling FBI serial from New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy and Tyler Anne Snell, Emmy Curtis and Janie Crouch.

Everyone has secrets. Everyone is vulnerable.

As tensions mount within the Crisis Management Unit, Special Agent Lara Grant’s relationships with her fellow agents fray as they race to find a hostage taken by the bomber.

But as the next high-profile target rejects the bomber’s demands, it seems like nothing can save the innocent victim.

A chance bit of evidence leads the CMU to a warehouse Lara knows all too well from her last case.

But will they arrive in time to prevent another murder?

All previous commitments to the weekend are now officially called off, I am so hooked and addicted to this story I need to find out what is going to happen and I have to binge on the rest of the novellas to do that. I need to find out that they will catch the Whisperer. I have to make sure no more people are going to die. But mostly, at the moment, I am concerned about the team members since the troops are crumbling and the pressure they are under is starting to affect them all. Will they survive as a team throughout the investigation? Are the secrets they are holding themselves going to eat them inside out? Is the fear of being targeted by the culprit going to give them more nightmares? Is Lara's past actually connected to the bomber?
The intensity of the story has been high since the first words of the serial novel. At Harlequin website, you can watch a video where the authors take turns to read the beginning of the first novella. As I watched it I had chills, literal chills going down my spine. And that has been the feeling as I have been reading the first four parts, the fervor of the investigation is immense. And it takes even deeper turn with the part four, as the team members begun to be affected personally by the case, and the confrontations are unavoidable.
We get a indebt look at Nick in this part and with his personal revelations I actually felt the sadness of his heart, and the hopelessness his self-discovery brought on. The relationship between Nick and Lara is beyond 'complicated', the new unsteady balance of power with the team chipping away from the previously weak foundation they had managed to built.
Most of the time as I read a novel I get deeply invested in the story, but the hook this serial has on me, the fixation I have with the characters, and the palpable danger, desperation, despair I sense from the novel is rare. I feel obsessed to continue reading the next novella
~ Five Spoons