Taylor StevensKirja-arvosteluja

Not a fan of this one at all.

I absolutely hated the main character and I keept thinking that the plot seemed really familiar. I could swear I've read this book before but it's too new for that to be true.

I found the ending completely unsatisfying and the romance angle to be completely out of left field, over dramatic, and annoying.

Greatest disservice to this book would be to compare it to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

True, both characters are female with special set of skills but that is where all similarities end. Lisbeth is not violent person in terms of uncontrollable rage - she behaves like an outcast but she is not self-destructive. As a matter of fact she is working very hard not to be in harms way and even if she gets herself in trouble she will try to find a workaround. She is pretty cold with exacting vengeance and she applies very simple math - me or them.

Vanessa on other hand is slightly more .... crazy. This woman has serious mental issues. The moment she starts tripping she only sees red - very much like berserkers of old. It does not matter what happens to her in that moment, she just moves in with whatever is at hand and wipes the floor with everyone (while collecting few "trophies" in process). And she is always playing with peoples minds to get them into fight because she enjoys that.

Both characters are damaged in terms of child traumas but unlike Lisbeth, Vanessa decided to leave her parents and roam the world where she did find the company of pretty messy people. And here we come to second point - Lisbeth is lone wolf, most of data collection (hacking etc) she does alone. She knows people but she needs to refund them for their services. Vanessa on the other hand relies on friends to assist her with issues at hand. And although Vanessa uses technology her main job is still hands-on espionage, break in and entry, standard detective work (interviews) and/or extraction of data by ... other means (again when she flips).

So in general, very similar but again completely different characters. And I love adventures of both. I enjoyed the first novel in Munroe series and will be reading more.

Highly recommended for all action and thriller aficionados.

Liars' Paradox (A Jack and Jill Mystery #1) by Taylor Stevens is a good thriller read. I want to thank Netgalley and the author for my arc. I am sorry that my delay I loved the book I just had a hard time the last two months sitting down doing my reviews. Jack and Jill some cute names for twins. Although the relationship between them is anything but cute. We can picture the sweet darlings romping in the sunlight always with wide smiles on their faces.
Boy is that not the case in Liars' Paradox. These twins have been trained by their commando mother to endure pain, deprivation, fear, isolation, and loneliness. The book reads like 007 meets revenge and I loved every minute. I thought Claire their mother is an odd ball who I actually liked. It wraps up well and I look forward to seeing how the two continue in the second book.

Vanessa Michael Munroe arrives in Japan, to be picked up at the airport by Miles Bradford, a close friend. She is recovering from a brutal attack that almost killed her during a job that did not go well. She is living with Bradford, trying to regain her equilibrium, while he’s working as a security consultant at a high-tech firm trying to uncover who within the firm is sharing information with other companies.

Munroe is using her time to pick up Japanese and explore, which she does on her motorcycle while Bradford is at the office, but she is getting antsy and wants something to do. She asks him if she can work with him, but he keeps her away from the office as much as possible. The one time she goes there, he insists that she wear her most feminine clothes and introduces her around. Not long after her visit, there are two murders at the company.

The book is divided into two parts, the days leading up to and then after the murders. When Bradford is arrested and charged as the murderer, Munroe takes over his job as a way of finding the truth and getting him out of prison.

V. M. Munroe is meant to be another Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. They share high level technology skills and fighting skills that defy human physiology, and both learned their trade despite the physical and psychological damage they experienced while coming of age. Munroe and Salander have few relationships, and the ones they have are hopelessly complicated. And neither is afraid of breaking the law if that is what is needed to get the job done. Munroe, however, does her work out in the open, and she can get away with this by sometimes presenting as a woman (Vanessa) and sometimes as a man (Michael).

The Mask is the 5th book of the Vanessa Michael Munroe series by Taylor Stevens. I had not read any of the books leading up to this one, so I didn't know the backstory of Munroe or the other characters, but Stevens provides enough information to flush Munroe out as a character and to pique my interest in the series.

The biggest flaw of the book is the writing. Up until the second part of the book after the murders, it was difficult to relax into the reading, because it seems that every sentence, every paragraph is written with overly stylistic structure and vocabulary so different from the everyday that it kept me on edge, and not in a good way. "With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, when it was too late to really matter, she'd pin the discomfort down to the muted screams of instinct, that sixth sense of animal knowledge trying to tell her that her other senses were lying, that this was more than what it seemed."
- Taylor Stevens, The Mask

There were also too many overt references to the dark future for the main characters, as if the reader weren’t smart enough to know that in this type of book things would go wonky and become dangerous. I found the future references at the end of each of the early chapters annoying as they disrupted the flow of the narrative and served to give the reader a chance to just put the book down rather than as a hook to keep the reader engaged.

In fact, these two issues, the convoluted sentences and clumsy foreshadowing, were not in the second part of the book, and this stylistic change made it seem that the first and second parts of the book had different authors.

I enjoyed reading how Munroe navigated the complexity of Japanese work culture, corporate espionage, and intermingling of the law and underworld, and how she made it out in one piece. There was a good balance of fast-paced action and violence with slower scenes of planning and watching, allowing the reader to take a breath occasionally. Despite the writing flaws, this book would appeal to anyone who wants their hero to be a woman who can fight and think but not wear a cape.

Vanessa Munroe comercia con la información de empresas, jefes de Estado, clientes privados y quien pueda pagar su insólito trabajo. Nacida en el centro de África, Munroe se formó con un traficante de armas, hasta que algo la obligó a huir y empezar una nueva vida sin mirar atrás. Hasta ahora.
De repente, un magnate del petróleo la contrata para encontrar a su hija, que lleva cuatro años desaparecida en África. Aunque no es su línea de trabajo, Munroe no puede resistirse al reto y vuelve al paisaje de su infancia. Sin embargo, para escapar de la selva y de los demonios que la persiguen, deberá enfrentarse a su propio pasado.

This was a well written book with a very good sense of place. The author made Africa feel so real. And coincidentally a place that I have no desire to visit at least the countries she writes about. The story was interesting and the outcome was different from what I expected. The characterization of the main character, Michael, was very rich. The other characters not so much as you didn't really know anyone else in any depth. I enjoyed watching her solve the mystery and do the informationist thing. I liked her mad skills. What held it back from more stars for me was a personal thing. I am not so fond of heroes/heroines who are so broken that they can't look on any bright side at all.

Still I am going to try the next in the series.

I listened to the unabridged audio version of this book. I wish I had a map of Africa. Good story and I'm looking forward to the next one

Vanessa aka Michael is a bit flat. The characters around her had more depth, but it was hard to care about her. Although the plot was interesting and took me to places I hadn't explored before, I just couldn't get into it. I'm not continuing with the series.

Fast-paced adventure with an unusual, complex heroine. The author puts her right on the border of being a superhero with her amazing talent for languages, brilliant mind, and lethal fighting skills, but there's enough humanity in her to make her interesting, if not entirely believable.

I will probably read the next book in the series, although will check it out from the library rather than purchase it.

adult fiction/thriller. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the Millenium (Stieg Larsson) series. For most of the book, including the crucial first 70 pages, the heroine is just a clever seductress with an uninteresting name (Vanessa a.k.a "Michael" even when she's not masquerading as a guy). She is only truly badass in a few scenes, and the rest of the time I can't say I care much for her. The fact that all the men that spend any time with her (with the exception of her gay friend Logan) become infatuated with her makes all of the characters seem kind of flat.

Not the greatest story ever, but it held my attention for a while. Michael (the heroine?) was a bit unbelievable, but an interesting character.

I wish this series had ended better. This wasn't really bad but I remember the other books being better. I felt this was unnecessarily drawn out, repetitive and sometimes, unclear on what the character is thinking about but the author seems to think the reader will understand. It took me almost 5 days to get through this and for me, that is a long time for a "fun" book. I'm giving this a 3 because of how I enjoyed most of the books in the series and how Michael was pretty awesome in this book when she got to be her usual decisive self.

This second which actually is, I believe, really her first, just published later than the other, book is a lovely read. The first was such a different, unexpected delight. This second is delightful but actually not that much different than the first in plot or really anything else. I enjoyed it but I hope the next one is different.

I warmed up to this slowly but once there, wow. It was a great, great read. Vanessa Michael Munroe is hired to find a young woman in eastern Africa. This is a new author and I'm anxiously waiting for her next books. Vanessa Michael Munroe is a protagonist like none other. I hope to meet her again, too.

Histrionic. Overly emotive. Repetitive. Show offy - look how much research I did! For a novella it's remarkably torpid. I zoned out several times while the author was showing how perfectly awful Americans are and how sinister, worldly, deadly and completely perfect the protagonist is. And smug with it into the bargain. Bleah.½

Not as good as her previous novels. Didn’t like the way it was written...too choppy

Liar’s Legacy by Taylor Stevens
Jack & Jill Thriller #2

Though I ended up loving this book it took almost halfway into the story to finally figure out what was going on even though I had read the first book and the book description. When I finally “got it” I could not put the book down and read through the night.

What I liked:
* Jack, Jill and Holden: Intriguing intelligent and lethal people that I want to know more about.
* Jack is a bit of an enigma and yet I do like him...he seems more of a pacifist than his sister Jill but boy can he be lethal when necessary!
* Jill is a bit more emotional, or seems so, with issues from childhood that have left a different kind of mark than those left on her brother.
* Holden is a man I would love to get to know better. I wonder if and definitely hope that he and Jill will find a way to an eventual romantic relationship.
* Kara was a mystery for much of the book. As I got to know her I really liked her and do hope that she will show up in book three.
* The fact that though assassins the characters are “real” and not without soul/heart
* The story – once I “got it”
* The sleuthing that took place when my brain decided to see why the twins were named Jack and Jill and how they might tie into the children’s nursery rhyme of the same name.

What I did not like:
* The political types who put their agenda before the people they were in charge of
* The fact that life has little value to others – at least at times
* Having to say goodbye without knowing about Dmitry, wondering what will happen next and having to wait for book three to find out.

Did I like this book? Yes
Do I want to read more in this series? Definitely

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4.5 Stars½

This is a page turner that is hard to put down. Munroe is a much more interesting and relatable character than Salander. I also loved the setting in Africa.

A rehash of every femme fatale and spy flick ever made.

I love the character of Vanessa Michael Munroe, but this was my least favorite in the series.

Wow, Vanessa Michael Munroe has a new fan. The exotic locations took me on a journey. She is mysterious and an expert in her craft with the ability to speak more than 20 languages with ease.

I love Vanessa Michael Munroe. She is reserved and troubled, but kind and compassionate. She never says die and takes no prisons.

3.5 Huge fan of this authors past protagonist, the kick ass Vanessa Michael Monroe. Here she gives us a new series featuring two fearless females and a male thrown in for good measure. Claire, the nother, in her fifties is a force to be reckoned with, her past life hidden in the shadows. Jack and Jill, twins, trained harshly in survival since the age of five. This is a dysfunctional family for the ages, with possibly just a little psychopathic anger in the mix.

Adrenaline fueled, cat and mouse chases, betrayal, gun fights and let me say these women can definitely hold their own. An adventure packed page turner, with an ending that nicely, okay well nothing is nice about this book, so aptly sets the stage for book two. Even in the worst of families, family still means something, especially if you hold the answers they need.

ARC from Netgalley.½

Munroe has retreated to Djibouti, where, while passing as a man, she finds work as an interpreter for a small, private, maritime security company. Pressed into duty at sea by her boss, Leo, Munroe discovers she is part of a gunrunning operation and she wants no part in protecting the crew or cargo. When the ship is attacked by pirates off the Somali coast, Munroe escapes and takes the unconscious captain with her to get answers. HARD

Vanessa is a camouflage artist, chameleon, collects information and speaks countless languages and dialects. She had lived in the past in central Africa, a dark and violent continent as described in the book.
Vanessa is sent to find a girl who four years ago traveled the continent and disappeared. Vanessa who lives on high adrenaline takes on the task of finding Emily.

She arrives on the Black Continent, accompanied by Miles Bradford, the contact person of Emily's father (the person who hired her.) They are immediately at risk of life and under surveillance.
The pace in the book is dynamic, the danger is palpable and real, and the plot is slanted. And the end is just excellent.