Exit Strategy by Charlton Pettus

An innovative debut thriller about the secretive organization that the rich and infamous call when they need to start over with a new name, new face and new life—and what happens when one client tries to go home.

Sometimes you just need to escape. For crooked politicians, military brass from third-world nations and white-collar criminals looking to avoid either prison or a deadlier form of payback, there’s Exit Strategy. With just one call, Exit Strategy helps these wealthy but wanted types disappear completely. They can fake your death, give you a new name and face and launder whatever ill-gotten funds you may need to establish a new life on the other side of the world.

When Jordan Parrish, the brilliant founder of a medical technology startup, made the call, he thought he had no other way out. With his marriage in shambles and his company on the brink of financial ruin, it seemed the only way to make things right. But after his exit, he began to wonder about the circumstances that led him to make that momentous decision. Was he just a victim of bad luck or was someone working against him? To find out, Jordan will have to break the cardinal rule of Exit Strategy: you can never, ever go back.

For fans of William Gibson, Michael Crichton and Robert Ludlum, Charlton Pettus’s Exit Strategy is a cutting-edge, globe-trotting thriller about the type of shadowy organization that most of us have long suspected exists behind the scenes.

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Author’s Bio

Charlton Pettus was born in Washington, D.C. in 1963. He grew up in Brookline, Mass., moving to New York City in 1986 when Buckner missed the ball. Since 2000 he has lived in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He is a songwriter/producer and touring guitarist for Tears for Fears. Exit Strategy is his first novel.

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My Review

4 stars

When things get tough and most of us feel like we can’t go on suicide seems to be the only way out. But for the elite among us, there is the Exit Strategy. For a nice chunk of change, you can fake your death, move across the world, and live on your ill-gotten gains that have been transferred to new bank accounts. The only rule, you can never go back.

Jordan Parrish seems to have it all. Brilliant scientist with a beautiful Harvard professor wife and a booming biotech startup. But things have gone downhill for him. After the death of their child, Jordan finds his marriage failing. Then his company starts failing too. The only thing he can think of is to kill himself but if he does that his family doesn’t get the insurance money. So Jordan decided to use the Exit Strategy.

Jordan fakes his death and is swept across the world to Asia to start his new life. But while there he realizes that he misses his old life. One click on an Instagram picture and he has broken the one rule of the Exit Strategy. Now his family and his life are on the line as he tries to figure out if the failure in this life was real or planned.

This was a pretty good story that kept me involved and had me hoping that Jordan would get out alive. I didn’t expect the direction it took and had a hard time putting the book down to go to sleep. There action, thrills, and a man that doesn’t realize what he lost until he is gone. This is a great story and one to check out.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.

I would like to thank Hanover Square Press for the opportunity to read and share this book.

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Now Available in Trade Paperback

Blog Tour: The Shadow Girl by Misty Mount

Genre: YA/ Fantasy/ Coming of Age

Publication Date: December 28, 2017

Synopsis:

Blackness. Nothingness. It was in the shape of a giant, hazy shadow, enveloping me, swallowing me, and digesting me into the unknown. It was my biggest fear and my ultimate fate.

Shy, thirteen-year-old Zylia has always known she was different. Most teenagers feel unnoticed and unseen, but for Zylia, it’s something much worse. She’s disappearing from this world and doesn’t know how to stop it. At times, she’s not sure she wants to. Until she stumbles across a family mystery surrounding the disappearance of her great-aunt Angelica years earlier. During her quest to unravel the mystery, Zylia discovers she’s able to cross the boundary and enter the “in between” world. Now, it’s up to Zylia to save herself before she’s trapped “in between” forever.

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Excerpt #1

I did my best to fight and claw my way back to the life I once knew, but panic had taken over and colors were swirling and fading all around me. It was all turning into a great cloud of blackness, just like the one I had seen in my dream. The looming cloud of nothingness I had feared for so long was finally grabbing me, wiping my world dark and blank.

The darkness was thick and intense, an inky void that stretched to eternity in every direction. Eventually my panic burnt itself out and I simply stayed there in the dark, feeling as if someone had drained my adrenal glands. I was no longer responding to the dark with fear, but acceptance. In fact, curiosity was beginning to take over.

The longer I let myself stare into it, the less dark it appeared. After some time, I realized that it was all different shades of murky black and foggy gray overlapping and undulating, just out of focus. I blinked mentally and suddenly she was there, standing above me with concern etched in sooty-colored lines on her monochromatic face.”

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About the Author

Misty Mount has written since age five and was first published at fourteen. By day she’s a caregiver, wife, and mother to a young son but during the quiet hours of night she becomes a novelist. She resides in Wichita, Kansas.

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My Review

5 stars

Zylia Moss is thirteen years old and feels like she is invisible. She is very introverted and tends to avoid situations that would embarrass herself. But people are starting to be surprised that she is around, even if she has been in the area for some time. This is happening with her family too, her mother has been known to not serve her dinner along with the rest of her siblings.

The only one that really notices her is her grandmother, the only problem is she has dementia and keeps saying that Zylia resembles her great Aunt Angelica. It seems Angelica disappeared when she was the same age as Zylia but anytime Zylia is around her grandmother, she get upset and accuses Zylia of know where Angelica went.

Zylia just thinks that she is disappearing but she learns that she is actually in the process of traveling to an in-between realm. Zylia is going to have to step out of her introverted shell to keep from disappearing like Angelica but maybe she can find some closure for her grandmother at the same time.

I loved this story. Zylia is such a wonderful girl yet is so quiet and hesitant that you can hope that she finds her place. I loved following her on this adventure. The story is well written and I felt like I was right next to Zylia in her dynamic family and on her journey.

Although this book is about a thirteen year old I think anyone will understand, relate, and cheer Zylia on. I can’t wait to read more from Misty Mount.

I received The Shadow Girl from Reads & Reels for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

Giveaway: 1 print and 2 digital copies of The Shadow Girl by Misty Mount

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*Print copy is available to North American residents only.

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