The Edge of Trust (Team Edge, #1) / Team Edge (ePub)

"Suzanne Brockmann fans will love KT Bryan." ~ Joyce Lamb, Bestselling Author of TRUE SHOT

USA TODAY - If you're looking for a darkly thrilling read as unpredictable as it is emotionally wrenching, look no further. KT Bryan deftly delivers all that and more. Adventure, betrayal, revenge and redemption-you'll find it all in The EDGE Of TRUST.

From One Good Book Deserves Another - Adrenaline-Filled Thrill Ride

What can go wrong in just 48 hours? A LOT.

When EDGE operative Dillon Caldwell was given a mission to infiltrate the Sanchez Drug Cartel and bring down its head, Rafael Sanchez, Dillon figured it would be a long, grueling year that he might not survive. He had no idea it would be three horrific, gut-churning years, or that the price paid for his efforts would be a nightmare worse than abject failure.

One by one his entire family is slaughtered.

Dillon, wracked by loss and guilt, is nearly rabid in his hunt for Sanchez, intent on ending his reign of terror. What he finds along the way, though, will change everything he thought he knew to be true. Washed up on a nearby beach, badly beaten and suffering from exposure, is the woman he thought dead for the past twelve months. His wife Sara is alive.

Dillon's stunned relief and joy are short-lived, however, shredded by the razor-sharp fangs of betrayal and kept secrets, scorched by the obvious disdain from a woman who may as well be a stranger. And if that's not enough, not only is Sanchez is still out there, but Dillon can't even trust the people he works for. Not when they kept the truth about his wife from him, not when someone on the inside burned his cover.

He's got a sadistic, murderous drug lord after him and someone from his own country betraying him. He's got a wife who is alive, but looks at him with loathing. And he's got the knowledge that, despite all best efforts, he has failed every single person he loved. Struggling with that burden is bad enough, but Dillon's plate isn't yet full. The stakes that he's played with for three years are raised higher still when he finds out that Sanchez has something of his, something Dillon didn't even know existed. And it's a game-changer in every way.

~*~

KT Bryan doesn't just kick off her Team EDGE series with this powerhouse of a story, she fills it with rocket fuel and launches it straight into the stratosphere. Powerful writing, a hell of a plot, and two flawed characters thrust into one incredibly perilous situation after another are the backbone of this awesome debut. As in all things, the devil is in the detail, and Bryan proved herself adept at snagging that devil by the throat, slamming it down on the page, and introducing her characters to hell.

When it comes to Dillon and his wife Sara as characters, we reach what, for me, elevated this book from a solid suspense read to one of my favorite reads this year. Not only were they deliciously flawed and grievously wounded individuals, but their emotional baggage and all their issues were ripped open and exposed in deliciously gritty, brutal fashion, in actions and reactions, fights and fury, angst and passion. It wasn't always pretty, certainly wasn't traditional for a romance novel, but it was so realistic (within the fictional framework) that I was left shaken by several scenes, my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots.

Grief, confusion, betrayal, guilt, blame, shame, and worse...including ugly emotions that danced dangerously close to hatred, Bryan gleefully dipped her brush into them all and splattered them into the gaping, bloody wounds of her characters' lives.

Well-written and complex, taut and emotional, action-packed and exhausting, this series debut is the whole package.