Wanted

Poster #2

by Amy Kulp, Jason Letts (editor), Madliart (cover_art)

What will bring down the most notorious female criminal in the world?

Meet “Y,” FBI’s third most wanted criminal best known for being cunning, intelligent and unknown to most a mother of a young boy. She is a criminal for hire on the black market of human trafficking..

But a new job brings with it a new dynamic that she’s never had to face. Working with a team but not just any team - a first of its kind even for a seasoned criminal like Y.

An all women team. Riddled with too many strong personalities, loose guns and a new target that triggers something at the core of Y she has ignored for way too long.

Trust is not something you can lean on in her world and when her son goes missing, Y will do just about anything. Suddenly everything is not gonna go according to plan.

Will Y find her son in time or is this her strange twist to live with?

279 pages, Paperback

Published December 31, 2023

About the author

Amy Kulp is a middle school STEM teacher and theatre director with a passion for writing novels that break YA genre norms. An avid reader and writer since childhood, Kulp now enjoys creating stories that investigate darker, more challenging topics and help young adult readers feel less alone in their struggles. She is especially passionate about championing sexual assault survivor justice, promoting LGBTQ+ rights, and lessening negative stigmas around psychotherapy. When she isn’t writing, Amy Kulp loves watching cartoons recommended by her students. Check out her newest YA
thriller, Missing, today!

Reviews

[Escape Into Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important things you need to know about the book:

Pace: Wanted has a fast-paced storyline.

POV: Wanted is told from Y’s 1st person POV.

Series: Wanted is the 2nd book in the Poster series. While you do not need to read book 1 to read this book, I suggest it. Book 1 explains Y’s backstory and how she ended up where she is now.

Trigger/Content Warning: Wanted has trigger and content warnings (most in this book are graphic). If any of these triggers you, I suggest not reading the book. They are:

Bullying
Sexism & Misogyny
Slut-Shaming
Rape
Sexual Assault
Sex Slavery
Sex and Human Trafficking
Domestic Abuse & Violence
Drugging
Miscarriage
Pregnancy
Forced separation of mother and child
Body Horror
Blood
Dead bodies
Brainwashing
Scars
Captivity & Confinement
Car Accident
Gun Violence
Kidnapping
Murder & Attempted Murder
Physical Assault
Sexual Content: There is sexual content in Wanted. Because of the nature of the book, I will warn you that some of Y’s memories involving sex and its being used for punishment can be graphic.

Language: There is moderate to explicit swearing in Wanted.

Setting: Wanted is set in and around New York City.

Age Range: I recommend Wanted to anyone over 21.

Plot Synopsis (as spoiler-free as I can get):

Y is used to being the best. In 10 years, she has never failed to deliver what her bosses want: people to sell on the human trafficking black market. After another successful procurement, Y is surprised by another target when she returns home. She is even more surprised when she sees her new team. It is made up entirely of all women. Her target is the biggest one yet: the daughter of a famous comedian. With only a certain number of days to acquire the girl, Y needs to whip her team into shape. Something doesn’t sit right with her about the team, but she will deliver. She always does.

Can Y deliver the girl? Will her team become a cohesive unit? Or will Y’s perfect streak go down the drain, and her life shatter into a million pieces?

Main Characters:

The characters in this book were not likable. But, I did pity them, considering everything they had gone through and would continue to go through. Even the “good” guys (and I use good loosely) were not likable, which surprised me. I wasn’t expecting the police and FBI to be shown in the way that they were, and honestly, the descriptions are probably more realistic than what people think.

Y, who is the main character, was realistically written. She is someone who was brainwashed into forgetting her past. She took pride in kidnapping people and couldn’t care less about what happened to them after she dropped them off. She was kept in line with threats of rape and torture. She had no hopes or dreams other than living for the moments when she could see her son. But there were cracks, which widened as the book went on. By the end of the book, I pitied her. But where she ended up wasn’t where she needed to be.

My review:

While I did enjoy reading Wanted, I was also very disturbed by it. Human trafficking is a huge problem everywhere. As the mother of 2 girls and a boy, I had nightmares of my kids ending up like those shown in the book. My range of emotions reading this book went from horror to sympathy to horror and then disbelief.

The storyline of Wanted was interesting. Wanted takes place ten years after the events of Missing. It follows Y, her team, their target, and what happens when a unit fails. It also follows Y as she slowly begins to remember who she was before she was trafficked and her rush to find her son. Both storylines were well-written and well-researched. While the storyline did disturb me on so many levels (see the first paragraph), I did feel the need to keep reading. I wanted to know if Y would ever regain her memories, find her son, or get captured by the police (she was #3 on the FBI’s most wanted list).

I really can’t go much into the storyline without giving away spoilers. Spoilers hinder me from writing the review the way I want. There is so much I want to talk about but can’t because of spoilers, some of them being major.

The end of Wanted both enraged and saddened me. Where Y ended up was the last place she needed to be. What was done and said to her by her husband made me want to go through the book and throttle him. But I am looking forward to reading book 3. There were a lot of storylines left up in the air.

Many thanks to Amy Kulp for allowing me to read and review Wanted. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An organization that’s run smoothly for years suffers from a complication and increased law enforcement attention that alters a young woman’s life yet again in Wanted by Amy Kulp.

To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.

After a decade within a trafficking ring and leading hundreds of successful missions kidnapping girls, Y is confident in her abilities and due to her success becomes the third most wanted by the FBI. For her latest mission, which begins unusually soon after her latest, Y is given a rare team composed of all females and a high-value target of a celebrity’s daughter. This mission has more at stake and variables to keep on top of; the carefully made plan quickly begins to go awry, separating Y from her team as they’re pursued by law enforcement. Taking the attention, arrest, and detainment upon herself and hoping that the girls complete the mission without her Y is confronted with unwelcome news of a mole and information during her interrogation that leads to growing doubts about the identity she clings to. Desperate to reunite with her young son, Y reaches a tenuous agreement to cooperate with the FBI but soon realizes that she can only rely upon herself as those she’s trusted, or had begun to trust, can easily turn against you.

Resuming the narrative of Y ten years after the events in Missing, the story continues with an unnervingly interesting premise, this time with a focus on Y’s cultivated perception of her world and those around her as she navigates within the confines and rules of the system she’s become integral to as she strives to stay in her son’s life in whatever capacity she’s able to. Y’s mind remains inquisitive but has shifted to be far more calculating in the years that have passed and the psychological manipulations she’s endured, which is conveyed as she quickly thinks through potential complications and consequences during the mission and while she’s in custody, morphing to an oscillation between the knowns and unknowns of her life as she begins to second guess what she believes to be true. Throughout the events that Y faces, a sense of determination to survive, desperation to reunite her family, and betrayal of trust is presented, highlighting relatable dimensions to her character while she commits more unfathomable acts; there’s difficult balance to the dual forces seen in Y as she’s hardened yet still soft and a perpetrator as well as a victim, demonstrating the complexities to her and the situation she’s in.

Overall, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

*I received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

[Michela Pantano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the time speed ahead. Y has now made her way to the top, but since she's a girl she's still facing sexism. This takes us through a mission as she begins to remember who she actually is. I liked how it kept me on the edge the entire time and hated the cliffhanger. I already know that there is going to be a third book (there has to be!)

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating of five stars mean I couldn't put the book down. I loved learning about Y's future since we last saw her. Usually I don't like sequels as they don't live up to the hype. I'm curious about a possible sequel?

[Anabelle Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the maturity of this one. It really shows how Y had been brainwashed. I loved the little easter eggs of old characters while also giving us an ending for a possible sequel.

[Kelly Crock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how dark it is! To me, it lived up to the first book and was much more interesting faster than the first one.