Midnight Target

Killer Instincts, Book 8

By: Elle Kennedy

Narrated by: Trevor Thompson

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Score and Midnight Revenge . . .

Four years ago, Cate's entire life changed when she discovered she was the daughter of a supersoldier. But Jim Morgan's overprotectiveness has pushed her away. These days, she's working as a freelance photographer and living the dangerous life Jim never wanted for her.

When Cate snaps a photo linking a corrupt South American politician with the leader of a notorious drug cartel, her mercenary father leads a team to rescue her—only to get shot and critically wounded in the process.

As Morgan's operatives rally together on a revenge mission, they're faced with new alliances and old heartaches. Cate is forced to work with David "Ash" Ashton, the man who broke her heart two years ago, while Liam Macgregor and Sullivan Port resurface after years apart to finally try to deal with everything they'd left unsaid.

Soon it's all-out war between the cartel and the mercenaries—with two couples caught in the middle of the blood feud. Love and redemption are within their reach . . . but first, they have to make it home alive.

©2017 Leeanne Kenedy (P)2023 Tantor

Nice Ending to Series

Loved it. The ending gives great closure for all the characters and story lines. I will miss the series, but I got great enjoyment out of it.

I could have done without the sordid details

I don’t think this would work as a standalone romance because so much of the story depends on knowing all the backstories and family connections built over the prior books. Listening to groundwork for the MM HEA, built over the past four books, was also critical to appreciate the final payoff here.

For the romance and the familial wrap-ups, this was a great listen. While the romance between 21 year old Cate and 28 year old Ash was decent, the series closes with a five star MM romance between Liam and Sully. Their love story was by far my favorite thing about this book (maybe even the series).

Unfortunately, this installment was full of overly detailed descriptions of violence, especially against women. I didn’t enjoy the multiple scenes where multiple men talked about all the sick things they did, or planned to do, to women. The author has been willing to kill off friends and family before, but in this book it felt like the author reveled in the gory, disgusting details. Did we really need to hear about someone’s grandma being violently killed and sexually abused? Or fingers being cut off with a dull knife? Or the look and smell of intestines from someone that was gutted?

Even worse than the gratuitous violence were the dark deeds of the good guys. If this was purely a thriller series, I might have been more forgiving. With this being a romance series, however, I didn’t enjoy listening to how our various MC’s past undercover work included pimping out women. I was really turned off by team’s willingness to do bad things, like torturing a wife to get a general to talk and justifying it merely because they were the haves rather than the have-nots, or feeling up a terrified, and already victimized, innocent woman to maintain cover. Yes, I’ve listened to worse in standard thrillers and crime procedurals. But it detracted from my enjoyment of the romance side.

Finally, I miss the original narrator. The new narrator did pretty well, although I didn’t like his Latin accenting and I sometimes found it hard to tell when Boston Liam or Aussie Sully was speaking.