Edge of your seat reading. Intrigue against suspense keep you hooked until the end. Unforgettable characters in this story as each page unveils and intense and suspenseful story. There are twists and turns in this story. Good read.

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions on the novel are my own.

This novel is intriguing and mystifying. A historical fiction story placed towards the end of World War II, I had no real expectations or ideas as to what this story was going to provide. By the time I finished the novel, I left both amazed and slightly curious about the writing process of it.

A brief synopsis: After taking in a man who is known to be the most influential man and greatest negotiator in the world, Emma Doyle decides to have him teach her the art of negotiation to find her kidnapped son. But to get to him, she must first take on the negotiator's mission of finding the nuclear bombs that Hitler has planned, and destroy them.

First things first, the main character. Emma was equal parts bad-ass and humble. As a main character fighting for what she wants, I was incredibly overjoyed that she felt like a real human being, and not someone who was pretending to be a superhero because of what was happening around her. Her movements were methodical and made sense for her character, and she was lovable at the same time, having a depth to her that I do not see often in other stories. However, I did not think that she was the main character at first. It was not until about a quarter of the way through the book that she was even expressed as being the main character.

This leads me to my next point, which is the perspective of the novel. The story is written in a kind of third-person omniscent, making it so that the reader is able to understand each character's thoughts at any given moment within a scene. While this is nice to have in some cases, for me I think it was too much. This perspective made it harder for me to understand that Emma was the main character because the reader spends much of the beginning of the story with her and the negotiator, who started off having more content of the novel than Emma until they parted ways.

That being said, each character was distinctive, their voices different and easy to pick out from a crowd when they were the only voice being focused on. The perspective of many people in one scene, however, would deter from this to due to the large volume of characters in certain scenes.

This novel seemed to have been heavily researched, and it showed. Upon further research on the author, Peter D Johnston is a well known negotiator, and has written a separate book on the art of influence and negotiation. It is clear that this novel was a passion project of Johnston's, because it was filled with so much love and appreciation for the art of influence and negotiation. It made me as the reader more interested in learning these kinds of tactics, for no other reason than to understand why it is so loved by this author.

The history aspect of this story was also well researched. Keeping in mind this is historical fiction, there are several things made up within this novel, mostly pertaining to the main characters. Many characters in this novel, however, are actual historical figures, and there are actual historical events that take place over the course of the novel. I have incredibly limited knowledge of some of the more finer details about World War II (due to the lack of teaching I received in school about the period), but it seemed to have been steeped well in research and seamed together incredibly well to feel like it could have been a part of the actual history.

Overall, Johnston delivered a surprisingly fascinating read, and made a lasting impression on me as a reader and researcher.