Ellie Austen has spent her life living in a shadow. As the daughter of Jamie Austen—the most lethal female assassin the CIA has ever known—Ellie enters the Agency with expectations she never asked for and a legacy she can’t escape.
Her first assignment is supposed to be simple. Quiet. Routine. Travel to the Cayman Islands. Identify a suspected CIA mole. Report back. But routine ends the moment Ellie realizes she’s being watched.
Hunted by terrorists who know far too much, Ellie is forced to kill to survive—and with that single act, the mission shifts from investigation to all-out pursuit. Someone has compromised the operation from inside, and every move Ellie makes confirms the unthinkable: the mole is closer than anyone suspects.
With the clock ticking and enemies closing in, Ellie must prove she’s more than her mother’s daughter. Because if she fails to uncover the traitor in time, the cost won’t just be her career—it will be her life.
In the world of espionage, secrets are inherited, betrayal runs deep, and apples don’t fall far from the tree.

It’s been a long time since I read a novella like this, mostly because I normally weed them out before I buy them. It’s not a bad book. It’s about as much fun as a middle-of-the-road pop song where you can predict each lyric in advance, you feel like you already know the tune, and you won’t be able to remember the melody five minutes later.

The writing is professional and slick, but in a boilerplate way that allowed the prose to pass through my mind without causing a ripple across my imagination. The plot is focused on action, devoid of self-doubt about the ethics of murdering the enemies of the United States, and propped up by a smug pride in just how efficient our whole family is in assassinating people.

The best thing about the book was that the action scenes were very well done. That’s what made me download this book when I’d normally have passed it over.

I was unaware of this long-running Jmie Austen series. BookBub offered the book as something I might like and told me that it was free on Amazon. I took a look, 

The first paragraph was a good one.

The man at the bar had a gun.

The next paragraph sent mixed signals:

Ellie Austen had one as well. Hers was better hidden. Had to be since she was undercover for the CIA. And also on a date.

I liked the attempt at humour, but starting a sentence with “And” raised a red flag.

The next paragraph was not good:

In sharp contrast, she sat across from a man who might be the most charming stranger she’d ever met. The soft light of the restaurant bathed his face, making his blue eyes sparkle as a warm smile with bookend dimples played on his lips.

My inner pedant hated this paragraph. “In sharp contrast to what or whom? ” he asked *The man with the gun that we’ve had no physical description of? Not much to contrast with, is there? Going with sparkling blue eyes and bookend dimples sounds like the start of cliché bingo, but please explain to me how exactly dimples play on anyone’s lips. Dimples appear in cheeks, not lips.”

The next paragraph almost had me rejecting the book even though it was free:

“So, Ellie, what do your parents do?” he asked, his voice low and inviting, almost blending with the rhythmic murmur of the waves off the ocean-front patio. A hint of the aroma of grilled seafood lingered in the air, grounding the moment in a warmth that felt almost too perfect.

My inner pedant roared. “Am I supposed to believe that a man on a first date with a twenty-something woman asks what her parents do AND she thinks it’s perfect? THAT’S RIDICULOUS. Also, how does the aroma of grilled seafood – which is mostly burning fat and flesh – ground a moment in warmth? Run from this book right now.“.

I should have listened to my inner pedant, but suddenly Ellie was excusing herself and seemed to be about to go after the man with the gun. I wanted to know what happened, so I downloaded the book to continue reading. 

The rest of the book was like the start. Prose that moved from the bland to the ridiculous. Shallow characterisation and clichèd decripions, followed by action scenes that were just interesting enough to keep me reading to the end of  184 pages of the novella, in much the same way that I might eat a whole tube of Pringles even though I’ve stopped tasting them. , 

When I finished, I vowed to listen to my inner pedant in the future. This kind of fast food novella is all sizzle and no steak.