Tough Justice: Countdown (Book Review and Giveaway)

Title: Tough Justice: Countdown (part 1 of 8, currently priced at $.99 each)
Author: Carla Cassidy
Publication: Harlequin Intrigue, ebook, February 2017
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Giveaway: I can give away one digital copy of Book 1 - see below

Plot: Tick. Tock. BOOM.

FBI Special Agent Lara Grant had thought that she’d put her past behind her—finally—with her last case. But now a serial bomber is targeting Manhattan’s elite power players, offering them a choice between saving hundreds of lives or seeing their darkest secrets exposed. Lara is working with the Crisis Management Unit to stop the bomber, but how will she react when she’s the one who has to choose between truth…or death?

Part 1 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.  Note that it looks like the first installment's title was originally Exposed and is now Countdown.

Audience: Fans of romantic suspense. You can *meet* the authors here.

My Impressions: This is a fast paced story told in eight installments of about 85 pages told by several of Harlequin’s popular authors. Lara is an intense, attractive, and flawed FBI agent who, in a previous case, went undercover to infiltrate the Moretti crime ring. As the story continues, we learn that Lara made some serious mistakes on that investigation and actually had a child with the notorious drug lord. To keep the child safe, Lara gave her up for adoption but this decision has caused her enormous grief. It is unclear how long ago that was (or if there are books about Lara’s previous case) but since then Lara has continued to throw herself into her work and has a passionate on again/off again relationship with her partner, Nick Delano. As this story begins, Lara and her team are tasked with investigating a killer who is using homemade bombs to terrorize New York. This is just the first installment but Lara comes across as superwoman tough yet vulnerable. As yet it is hard to distinguish between the other characters and their personalities but I look forward to learning more about her complicated back story and the interrelationships with other members of this elite FBI team.

About the Series: Harlequin launched a serialization publication with the debut of this Tough Justice mystery-suspense series. The eight-part digital-first serial is a multi-author endeavor that sees all the episodes in the series published simultaneously and are available as ebooks and as audiobooks. Each installment is currently priced at $.99.   Click here for purchase links and here for more info about the series.

I have one digital copy to give away.   If you are interested, please leave a comment below and I will pick one at the end of February.

Source: I was provided a pre-publication copy of the first installment of this book by the publisher for review purposes. Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Harlequin for including me in the launch of this series.