superbly suspenseful: assassin games by sidney bristol

the latest tarnished heroes novel has cia contractor anderson gratney working to protect cia analyst carol sark from the group within the cia that has been leaking and compromising government missions for years. carol has a program that might connect all the dots, but she's not a true coder. andy, however has skills. he's got assassin skills, he's got covert spy skills, and he's got hacker skills. he's the full package. and so assassin games kicks off in high gear.

with carol, andy breaks protocol in small ways. when they first make contact he pretends to be a flirtatious guy named mark. and he wants to believe that mark isn't real. that the guy carol falls for isn't him. but over time carol sees that mark is andy and andy is mark. that underneath the badass super spy there is a sweet guy who she could easily love. and that to be loved by that guy, the badass super spy with the sweet guy buried deep, would be life-affirming.

given the stakes, life-affirming is good. there are casualties in these covert spy games. hard, difficult truths are revealed. and at the end of the day, it's still not clear who the bad guys are really. but i'm looking forward to the next installment, which i strongly suspect will be mitch and irene. the heat between those two characters is as unmistakable as the heat between andy and carol. at some point it will boil over, and i can't wait.

**assassin games will publish on july 23, 2018. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing (amara) in exchange for my honest review.