Going Dark

by Jolene Grace

Gabriel Jets is the CIA’s top agent, a man with a reputation of getting the job done, no matter the price. On a rare visit back to the States, Jets is dispatched to collect a video depicting the kidnapping of four U.S. journalists working undercover in Damascus, Syria.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president and his chief of staff, Robert McKaine, are called to the Situation Room to receive a briefing. Damascus is rocked by a terrorist plot that killed twenty-five innocent people.

A link between the two events is quickly discovered, with evidence pointing to the involvement of another U.S. journalist, Amelia Sinclair, a prominent foreign correspondent, with direct ties to the missing.

While Jets hunts for the video, he crosses paths with Amelia. In a blink of an eye, his mission is compromised as he believes she is being set up to be the fall guy.

As the U.S. government closes in to arrest Sinclair, Jets alters his assignment to help clear her name and track down the powerful men behind the ploy to draw in the country into an international scandal.

If Jets fails, the country he swore to protect, will go dark.

Genres: Thriller

399 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 11, 2018

About the author

Jolene Grace knew only one thing with absolute certainty when she was a child — she’d become a writer when she grew up. At first, she wrote her stories in journals, scraps of papers, napkins, even her schoolbooks. Writing gave her an outlet to create worlds in which bad guys got punished for doing bad things. And the good guys always won.

Reviews

[Shelle Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political intrigue and betrayal on a grand scale. When four reporters are kidnapped from their hotel room in Syria an anonymous source sends UN correspondent, Amelia Sinclair a video of the incident. Over the next few days, she will be shot at, accused of heinous crimes, and sought after by the highest levels, and shadow elements, of the US government. CIA agent Gabriel Jets has been tasked with retrieving the video. Keeping Amelia safe isn’t part of that assignment, yet he suspects that somehow there is more to what is happening than he is being told and he believes that she is the key.

While the big bad is obvious from the start, it is still quite difficult to know who are the good guys and who, if anyone, should be trusted. It starts off a bit slow and wordy, more of a montage of people craving coffee than any real exposition, but the story soon turns into a roller coaster ride of action, with plenty of gunplay, chases, and black ops. This story isn’t for the faint of heart with plenty of gratuitous murder and treason as well as touching on human trafficking.

As an origin story for the Gabriel Jets series, it offers a lot of potential for the story to come and can only get better from here.

I received a complimentary evaluation copy of this book. All opinions and insights are my own.

[Shelle Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political intrigue and betrayal on a grand scale. When four reporters are kidnapped from their hotel room in Syria an anonymous source sends UN correspondent, Amelia Sinclair a video of the incident. Over the next few days, she will be shot at, accused of heinous crimes, and sought after by the highest levels, and shadow elements, of the US government. CIA agent Gabriel Jets has been tasked with retrieving the video. Keeping Amelia safe isn’t part of that assignment, yet he suspects that somehow there is more to what is happening than he is being told and he believes that she is the key.

While the big bad is obvious from the start, it is still quite difficult to know who are the good guys and who, if anyone, should be trusted. It starts off a bit slow and wordy, more of a montage of people craving coffee than any real exposition, but the story soon turns into a roller coaster ride of action with plenty of gun play, chases, and black ops. This story isn’t for the faint of heart with plenty of gratuitous murder and treason as well as touching on human trafficking.

As an origin story for a Gabriel Jets series, it offers a lot of potential for the story to come and can only get better from here.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book opens with Amelia Sinclair receiving a video of four foreign journalists being kidnapped from their hotel in Damascus. Amelia is now on everyone list as the person to be taken out. They send in agent Gabriel Jets. When the two of them escape a room in Brooklyn Jets starts to wonder why someone else was there as well to take her out. Later when she is able to show him the entire video, he sees the discrepancies that she had seen from the beginning. After having his handler run through the video as well who comes to the same conclusion, you are now sent on an even higher paced and full of action story than what it was at the beginning.
This book is full of espionage and different forces at play. One someone from the Whitehouse, and from somewhere else, so Jets must go dark by letting them think he is nowhere around. This just adds to the story so once you get started you won’t put it down until the end. A very good book. I received this book from Netglley.com I gave it 4 stars. Follow us atwww.1rad-readerreviews.com

[Coco.V]

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Blurb:
Gabriel Jets is the CIA’s top agent, a man with a reputation of getting the job done, no matter the price. On a rare visit back to the States, Jets is dispatched to collect a video depicting the kidnapping of four U.S. journalists working undercover in Damascus, Syria.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president and his chief of staff, Robert McKaine, are called to the Situation Room to receive a briefing. Damascus is rocked by a terrorist plot that killed twenty-five innocent people.

A link between the two events is quickly discovered, with evidence pointing to the involvement of another U.S. journalist, Amelia Sinclair, a prominent foreign correspondent, with direct ties to the missing.

While Jets hunts for the video, he crosses paths with Amelia. In a blink of an eye, his mission is compromised as he believes she is being set up to be the fall guy.

As the U.S. government closes in to arrest Sinclair, Jets alters his assignment to help clear her name and track down the powerful men behind the ploy to draw in the country into an international scandal.

If Jets fails, the country he swore to protect, will go dark.

[Raf Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhere in here is an interesting thriller about issues that are vitally important today, such as terrorism, journalist kidnappings, and the war in Syria, taking place in exciting locations like NYC, DC, Philadelphia, Kuwait, and the Oval Office but the author needs to do a lot more work to unearth it.

I care very much about characters, so if I don't connect with the characters I generally do not like a book. I have to say that the quality of the writing made it impossible for me to empathize with or like the characters, as they just seemed lifeless and moved around as the plot required.

Amelia is a single mom, a journalist and apparently the central character (as she is introduced first), but she doesn't do much: she screams, she's paralyzed by fear, she gets knocked out, she forgets her laptop charger, she sobs a lot and is generally useless. I'm not saying a character can't be scared and upset, but she doesn't seem to do very much either.

Gabriel Jets, who isn't introduced until later, is apparently the main character as the series is named after him? But we don't learn much about him, I think because the author is trying to tease readers: is he the bad guy or the good guy? But there's so little information about him that he's just uninteresting.

I found the writing awkward and repetitive and wordy. These sentences are all in the first pages of the book. Some of them are just overblown, some are physically impossible, some are first draft sentences that should have been revised down in editing:

She wheezed under her breath
Her wanting eyes pulled away from the drip and zoomed in on the working TV monitors above.
Alarmed by the unopened email, Amelia stood and poked her surroundings with probing eyes.
After a long inhale, she found herself at her desk, fingers blazing on the keyboard.
Following their movements with her eyes, her mind caught her by surprise as it replayed Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”
She squinted to adjust her sight.

In addition to the wordiness on the sentence level, there's just too much filler on a scene level--in a thriller who cares about the steps of making coffee? Why are there so many details about her train ride uptown when it doesn't matter to the plot and doesn't do anything to establish character? Later the filler takes on the form of unnecessary scenes and additional points of view.

Also, I think this is a typo, but the author seems to use Arabic and Farsi interchangeably, and they are not the same languages, and it made me doubt her expertise: if she doesn't know the difference, what does she know about what's actually happening in the Middle East or in politics in the US?

The only character I thought was remotely interesting is killed Polina, who I think I liked because she is shown as competent and doing something and I believed her competence.

There were some good lines like “She was laying it thick on Jets, feeding the suspicious monster inside.” however they are mostly buried under awkward sentences. I think the author has a unique perspective on the world and a lot of interesting experiences that could inform her fiction that I would want to read some day. However, she would be well served by several rounds of beta readers and editing before putting her fiction out in the world.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read, an amazing plot and action filled. You really get to know the characters and the human Dilemma’s they are going through even for a spy such as Gabriel Jets who are typically seen as “robots” and unemotional creatures who are there “to do what is needed to be done”.

I like that the author left out the politics of real life and really focused on the story between Amelia the journalist, Jets the spy and the CIA agency as a whole.

Would definitely recommend to read and as a gift!!

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book jumps right into and never stops. I read it in just 2 days. There has to be some suspension of disbelief, as is often the case with spy thrillers but it was action packed. The romance piece turned me off a bit but it also added to the development of the motivations of the characters.
I look forward to the next in the series.

I was given a copy from Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

[S.L. Shelton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grace's debut novel is a good story. It has all the components of a fine political and espionage thriller, and with a little work it could be great. I enjoyed Amelia's perspective of the story but was confused by the jumping around. I'm also a little confused that it's a "Gabriel Jets" Book 1 but we didn't meet him until later, and even then his perspective was limited. I can only imagine how hard it is writing a story in a language that is not native, so true A for effort goes to Grace for her sincere and powerful first attempt. As I said, the story itself is quite good, and with some work could be a true top thriller. I look forward to revisiting this author, and if she makes adjustments, I'd love to see this story presented in a manner that honors the creativity and timeliness of the plot.

[Neil McFarlane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spy thriller centered around the male/female characters of CIA Agent Gabriel Jets and Amelia Sinclair, a journalist working at the UN. It reminded me of an action movie. I would have liked the characters to have been a bit more developed, but If you like action, it won't be a problem for you.