It doesn’t matter how many accolades a book or author might have, the reader knows at once on the first words, how good a book may, or may not be, and the first words of the Freedom Broker by K. J. Howe are gripping! You start off reading about Thea Paris, in the middle of a jungle, in Nigeria, that must survive this mission if she want’s to go home, because there would be no way of turning back, or being found by anyone. It’s do it, or die forgotten. All of this, told skilfully in less than 50 words, now you tell me: how amazing is that?
So, we have Thea Paris, a hardcore, highly intelligent woman that is the best in releasing and saving high-profile hostages, with some badass military training and a focus of steel as our main character, and we follow her as she executes her missions and tries to keep up the pace of her demanding job while keeping her sanity with her while dealing with Riff, her “friend” that is a highly trained soldier and has been with her family since they both were kids. Although they clearly love each other, they have several problems in regards of following orders and understanding each other.
So, Thea Paris also happens to be the daughter of one of the biggest oil magnates in the planet, and her father, being a very diligent and rigid man likes to get his way and follow through, but things go array when she tries to meet him in his sixtieth birthday.
The interesting thing is that, in the oil game, apparently there is a lot of back-stabbing and cutthroat is a usual thing to do to rivals, partners and even your own boss, so, after what happened with her father, anyone and everyone was under high scrutiny, given that at the time, there was a big oil discovery in a region of Africa, and everyone wanted a piece of it. Add that to the fact that the kidnapping and trafficking of people and the distribution of guns were increasing in the same regions, there was surely a clear connection between the two factors, but the question remains: “Who is pulling the strings?” and above all “Who exactly would win the most with the death of Thea’s father, and why did they try to contact her?”
Business interests, family interests, dangerous and lethal love affairs, sexual tension, double identities, bonds to be mend and bonds to be torn, emotional contradiction and twisted motives driven by trauma and the want to be admired, that ironically cause the destruction that one is looked down upon for and tightly kept secrets and lines that run dangerously close, all of it told a narrative that is as exquisite that is just as exquisite as the story itself, Freedom Broker is an adventure of a book.
..... Full Review here.
