I requested this from NetGalley on the basis of the name and the promised Central American location. I read a couple of chapters, but it was quickly turning into a noir or thriller, seeming to be set largely in the US - neither noir nor thriller is my type.

Fully my mistake.

Callie Byrne is ex-military MP who served in Iraq, recovering addict, and all-around bad ass who has lost custody of her son to her yuppie sister and whose best friend is a priest with a strong moral core and a need for absolution. When her friend and former lover, Rachel, disappears in Guatemala after sending Callie a message asking for help, Callie ditches common sense and her parole officer, picks up her fellow ex-MP, Angus, and catches a flight to Guatelmala.

What she finds is a drug cartel hiding within a leather goods company as well as a human trafficking ring–and a chance to do the right thing for the right reasons and regain her pride.

This is a debut novel with language that is engaging and fast-paced. There are no glaring plot holes, out-of-place language, or moments where our suspension of disbelief is torn away. Callie is a compelling character, with Angus a close second.

Advance copy courtesy of netgalley.com

Finished 7/18

The main character, Callie Byrnes, is a former Iraq vet whose post-service life is pretty dismal; her son is living with her sister, she's a recovering addict, and she is living day to day. Her loyalty to her friend Rachel gets her into a lot of trouble, but it also brings her life back to her. Through a series of horrifying events, Callie's survival skills, her love for her son, and her unexpected bond to young mother Ixchel,

What struck me most about this book, especially given current events, was the unflinching bravery required by Ixchel and other women from Guatemala to dare escape their horrific circumstances in exchange for unknown, also probably horrific circumstances, for the slim chance of a better life in the US.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The writing style left something to be desired here. It was unpolished, The typos and grammatical errors throughout the entire book made some parts a difficult read though. For example, there as several spots where words were either added or omitted from sentences. Some words were the wrong form like being pluralized or past-tense. Some words looked like auto-correct mistakes. It took me out of a story that I was already having a hard time relating to and sinking in to. With some cleaning up and tightening, this would be a better experience, though probably not entirely for me.

Backstrap is an indictment of the drug trade that originates in harsh little rundown towns in places like Guatemala. I felt the sense of hopelessness that lives in areas that are run by murderous cartels. They suck the life out of people that have no other way to earn a living. This story made me cringe at times knowing there are people who have no regard for human life. Writing that can cause this kind of reaction is very good. I commend Johnnie Dun on writing such a powerful first novel.

The premise was good but I found myself skimming a lot of it just to finish it. I can see how others would really love the book but it wasn’t my favorite.

Unfortunately this book just didn't hook me. It was well written and the synopsis appealed to me at first, but I found it difficult to keep reading.

I tried several times to get into this book and wasn't able to do so. The characters and overall plot idea are interesting, but the writing did not get or keep me engaged. I made it through 1/3 or so of the book before deleting from my Kindle.

Callie Byrne is a trying to get her life together after rehab from painkillers & PTSD. She needs to separate herself from a negative group of friends. But then she receives a cry for help from her long time friend Rachel. Callie needs to go to Guatemala to try to save her friend.

Since Callie was a MP in Iraq and spent time involved with illegal drugs, the author uses a lot of terminology that I don't understand. At first I looked it all up, but then started skimming through it. Another thing I skimmed was all the philosophy & life issues. I started the book reading it all, but soon lost interest. I did like the basic story and so finished the book. I'm glad I did, although drug & sex trafficking are NOT my favorite subjects.

This is a book filled with violence, depravity and evil, yet it is basically the story of the triumph of the human spirit as Carrie, a wounded soul, finds the goodness within herself when she decides to assist a young woman mired deep on the cartel drug and human trafficking trade. The writing provides enough description to create images of the action, but is more about the action than the location. More than one person is trying to do some good, but only one survives. The only character I could relate to was not a survivor, which made the book less enticing for me.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”—this lyric from “Me and Bobby McGee,” once epitomized Callie Byrne’s life. But after serving her country in Iraq, she had a baby boy, became addicted to heroin, and went to drug rehab. Now she’s bartending in Philadelphia.

While Callie was in rehab from painkillers and this invisible thing assigned the letters PTSD, her counselor had suggested changing her “circle of friends,” as if Tony Maul or Peter Jagg were friends. More like a noose than a circle. Their presence haunted a dead zone within her, and she was having trouble escaping it. She had deleted Tony’s info six months ago. But he was addicted to his own menace, like a house fly you couldn’t kill. This afternoon a package was waiting for her at the Grave addressed in Rachel’s scratchy handwriting. A return address from a ranch in Guatemala of all places. The manila envelope sat unopened below the bar on the ice machine. She was waiting for a quiet moment to open it. Mail in the twenty-first century was rarely good.

Her friend Rachel’s in trouble with her ex-dealer, Tony Maul: she asks Callie for help. Callie lives in a Roman Catholic halfway house, alone. Her son Dillon doesn’t live with her because of her struggles with addiction—her sister has custody. John F. Kennedy once said, “To have a child is to give fate a hostage,” so why, with everything to lose, does Callie agree to help an old friend get out of trouble? Is it loyalty? A vestige of her time in the military—never leave a comrade behind?
Cassie reaches out to Tony and Rachel.

She grabbed her phone, thinking, No, don’t fuck with me, Tony. I could blow your world apart before you even know I’m there. She replied to Rachel: R, Getting weird messages from Tony. He thinks I’m helping you. Let me know you’re okay. Like give me an email once a day?

She doesn’t hold back when she texts Tony.

She typed and retyped ten times, debating how to walk the line between calm and kickass. Tony might be self-involved, be he was always intense and thinking. Finally, she had: Nobody’s after you. Just leave Rachel alone. Or I will flush whatever business you’re into down the shithole. Like mixing a cocktail, just the right blend: an offer to walk away with the obvious hint of a bullet in the chamber if he opted for stupid.

Something else is troubling Callie: “For most of her life, she had loved being around guys.” But now, the male species is “small, faint, and insignificant to her.” With insight gained from her time in rehab, she acknowledges that she doesn’t “really care about anybody else except those just as busy being addicted.”

Now, she was learning to carry her sadness around, to live with boring routine as a matter of existing within so-called normalcy. But she had lost the ability to interact with men from any position of comfort in her own skin.

To rescue her friend, Callie must reignite her ability to work alongside men—she can’t pull off a rescue in another country solo. With Betty, “her Beretta M9 pistol—the sidearm MPs carry—strapped to her back beneath her loose t-shirt,” Callie pays a visit to Lukas “Angus” Kistler. She tells him Rachel is in trouble. Johnnie Dun paints a vivid picture of Angus.

Angus had liked Rachel, but she had always turned him down, except one drunken night, and then promptly returned to the same dismissals. But Angus kept a protective ring around women he cared for, no matter what. It made him a strange combination of rural Pennsylvania beef farmer, twenty-first century army body armor, and old world chivalry.

Angus tells Callie that he’ll go on his own, that she needs “to stay here for Dillon,” but Callie realizes that Tony’s threatening messages were “meant to put her in a box of inaction.”

The message from Rachel that had an absolute trust in her to act, just as Rachel would do for her or Angus. Life had almost been easier in rehab, where you just took care of yourself.

Deep down, Callie believes that “war for some greater good led to living.” The alternative, a solitary life where she only thinks about herself. Backstrap is a wild ride: “Callie must navigate the underground world of drug and sex trafficking between the jungles of Guatemala and a shady Manhattan leather import business.” When Callie and Angus fly into the Belize City airport and make their way to the remote ranch, Callie feels an excitement she hasn’t felt since her time in Basra, Iraq: “There was the wonderful, thick sense of being alive and lost at the same time.” The tension and excitement of Backstrap is unrelenting—Callie Byrne really does “walk the line between calm and kickass.” She’s a flawed, indomitable woman on a quest to save a friend—and maybe herself as well.

Book given to reviewer for honest review.

Truthfully, I have very conflicted feelings about this novel. I was drawn into it slow and increasingly as the tension ratcheted but found the characters so despicable that it was hard to care for them. Callie Byrne is a sassy Iraq vet and a previous heroin addict with a mouth that can throw poison darts. Initially, the novel takes place in Philadelphia where I live so I got a real kick out of being familiar with the background. Most of the action though takes place in Guatemala where Callie ventures to find her missing friend Rachel. She got a more than she bargained for with the discovery of a girls being shipped to the US as prostitutes along with a huge shipment of cocaine. How she manages to escape this misery and return home to her son is the ultimate goal . This novel might appeal to individuals who enjoy gritty language and abstract characters.

Thank you Netgalley for sending me this book in exchange for a honest book review. It was the cover & the synopsis that caught my eye & I requested it. The plot was interesting but for some reason it wasn't a book that kept me intrigued. It surrounds a group of ex-military friends that served together in Iraq. The main issue in the book is around drugs & human trafficking which can be made really really good.

No matter how many times I tried to get into this book, I just couldn't. There was a promising cast of characters and the plot was interesting, but there was something about it that just did not catch my attention. Backstrap had a little bit of everything that I like in a thriller: morally gray characters, mysterious happenings just under the surface, people trying to get their lives together but getting sucked back into unsavory storylines. I think I'm just over stories about fictionalized stories about Latin American countries that focus on drug-trafficking and human smuggling without acknowledging all of the other factors (like white people coming in, profiting, or acting as white saviors).

Murder, human trafficking, drugs, all things gone bad have happened in this book. Callie has PSTD but she is working to right wrongs. The writing style leaves some to be desired for me. It takes some doing to finish the book, but it picks up more in the second half.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

I love shipping containers. It's just one of those things. It's all about math. They are pretty little boxes that you fill with other boxes and then you fit them all together on a boat and send them places. It's like Legos with velocity as an actual grown up job. Someone actually pays me to do Geometry all day long. I love it. I requested this book on NetGalley because it had a shipping container on the cover. And then it turned out to be about a smuggling ring. The story was exciting and intriguing. Callie goes to Guatemala to find her friend Rachel and ends up in the middle of a drug and human smuggling operation (though it made the novel more exciting and allowed it to flow better, I'm pretty sure I'd never send both of these things together on one boat but I'm not actually a criminal, so who knows), which may cause harm to her family. It was really different from most of the books I read and I really liked it. You don't have to be a logistics or shipping nut to enjoy it either, so don't be put off by the geekiness of my review. There is little to no actual math in the book itself.

An aside, Hapag-Lloyd is mentioned (I hope the spelling was fixed in edit) and I happened to read that part on a day that I had spoken to someone from Hapag-Lloyd (my favorite steamship line) twice on the phone, and that almost never happens. It made me laugh.

This novel was enjoyable to read. Following the main character through her journey of danger, despair and love was like no other.

Loved the mystery and thriller if this book. I really enjoyed C Byrne , because after everything she went through she is still trying to be a better person.

It is not typical of me as a reviewer to not see a book to its ending, but there was just something too jarring about Johnnie Dun's Backstrap. The writing felt stilted, unbelievable (unedited?) and it just did not reach out to me like I hoped it would. I can usually even put aside an unlikable character for the hope of something more, but I could not get past Dun's Callie, a war vet with a drug-addled past, trying to make up for lost time.

Blame it on first novel jitters I suppose, or, better yet, Backstrap is for a particular group of readers, who will put aside a slow start for the hopeful sugar rush in the middle or end of a book.

I really find myself gravitating toward characters who have gone through tough times and sincerely want to change. Callie Byrne is this type of person, she has overcome drug addiction, time in the military in Iraq that traumatized her and the loss of custody of her son. Callie now has a job, is clean and wants to do what it takes to get her son back.
Callie receives a disturbing letter from her friend Rachel and winds up in Guatemala dealing with people and situations that are dark, disturbing, illegal and at times deadly. Callie tries her best to help those she encounters in need so she can then return home to her son. The story moved along at a fast pace and the author did a great job developing characters. I love when I can “see” a character which pretty much stops me from watching books made into movies. If the actor doesn’t look like my picture, I am totally disappointed! (Personal problem for me to try and overcome.)
Thanks to Johnnie Dun, AuthorBuzz and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review. I will definitely be looking for his next book.