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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

REVIEW: The Night Trade by Barry Eisler @barryeisler @amazonpub #CJSReads

The Night Trade
(Livia Lone #2)
by Barry Eisler

Big thanks to Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publishing for these copies in return for our honest reviews.  I was SO excited to get my hands on this copy as I absolutely LOVED Livia Lone when I read it last year.

See my FIVE STAR review for book one, Livia Lone HERE.



Publisher:  Thomas & Mercer
Publishing: January 23, 2018
Pages: 320
Genres:  Thriller, Suspense
Paperback
Series: Book 2 Livia Lone series

Goodreads Synopsis:

For sex-crimes detective Livia Lone, a position with a government anti-trafficking task force is a chance to go back to Thailand to ferret out Rithisak Sorm, the trafficking kingpin behind her own childhood ordeal.

But after a planned takedown in a nightclub goes violently awry, Livia discovers that she’s not the only one hunting Sorm. Former Marine sniper Dox has a score to settle, too, and working together is the only way to take Sorm out.

Livia and Dox couldn’t be less alike. But they share a single-minded creed: the law has to serve justice. And if it doesn’t, justice has to be served another way.

What they don’t know is that in threatening Sorm, they’re also threatening a far-reaching conspiracy—one involving the highest levels of America’s own intelligence apparatus. It turns out that killing Sorm just might be the easy part. The real challenge will be payback from his protectors.

My Review:

I read Livia Lone, book one in this series, last year and fell in LOVE with the book. Livia Lone is a bad ass character who is deeply flawed and set on a path of vengeance for what has happened to her, her sister and many other young girls out there.

I was beyond thrilled to get a copy this book to see what Livia has been up to and she certainly is a busy busy woman! Still dealing with vengeance on the rest of the group who had abused and tortured her and her sister, she's awarded an opportunity to go back to Thailand. In doing so, she ends up working with Dox, who has his own motivation to go over these men. Particularly, Sorm, the baddest of them all.

I loved the interactions with Dox and Livia. She is not an easy one to deal with and he fits in quite perfectly. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about a pairing, but Dox is a character I grew to love. Livia is still as bad ass as ever and her thirst for vengeance will NOT be sated until she gets each and every one of the bad guys. She realizes that this is a continuous battle - because when she's done with the immediate group she's honing in on, there are (sadly) many more like them still out there. It KILLS her to not be able to save each and every little girl out there being exploited.

This book is action packed and keeps you turning the pages. For me, it felt very similar to book one, without the past and present back and forth. Instead we get a more linear story line. I DO recommend reading book one before this one so you get a full background on Livia and can understand her character more for this one. 

Book two in a series is always a tough one. It's a continuation of book one and then setting up for more in the series. When book one is such a HIT (for me anyways), then book two is hard to follow sometimes. I think that's a bit of what happened here. Still a solid thriller and I absolutely plan to continue this series. Livia, I'm not done with you yet!


Jessica's Review:

This is book two in a series (book one is LIVIA LONE) and I would highly recommend reading book one first. I wouldn't categorize THE NIGHT TRADE as a standalone to the series. However, this is still a great thriller and I will be looking for more about Livia!

Livia Lone is a sex crimes detective and works with the government's anti-trafficking task force. She's definitely a force to be reckoned with! She is given the opportunity to go back to Thailand to try and take down Rithisak Sorm, the trafficking kingpin from her own past. 

When their attempt goes horribly wrong, Lone quickly discovers she isn't the only person trying to track down Sorm. We are introduced to Dox, a Marine sniper, that has his own reasons behind wanting to take down Sorm. Will they be able to work together to take him out?

I will say that you need to read book one to do this book justice. There is a lot of backstory that you will be missing out on and that will cause confusion. I loved Livia - she's a bad-ass protagonist working against sex-crimes. So if you're looking for a series with a great female lead, then i would recommend picking up the Livia Lone series!

Overall, I give this one 3.5/5 stars - despite being lost with a couple of parts, it was still very entertaining to read and I will be going back to book one. 

Sam's Review:

The Night Trade is the second book in the series starring sex crime detective Livia Lone.  Having not read the first book, entitled Livia Lone, I still decided to give this one a chance since the idea of a kick-ass female protagonist fighting sex trafficking was too far up my alley for me to pass up!

Pretty much immediately, I knew that I had made a grave error.  I think it is an absolutely necessity to read the first book in the series before trying to combat this one.  Most of the Livia’s back-story and the other characters went completely over my head and I spent quite a bit of my time heading over to my Goodreads page to try and figure out what had happened in book one based on snippets from other reviews.   

I know that Chandra read (and loved!) book one, so, to do this book justice, I think it is only fair that I head back and read the first in the series. The Night Trade absolutely intrigued me enough to be curious of the whole story. 

I am rating a 3 for now and will readjust later!

2 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of the John Rain series of books. So when Barry Eisler introduced a new series I was interested. Book one (Livia Lone) was ok. I found it kinda depressing. I liked the NOW from the THEN and NOW. But the THEN bummed me out. Still I powered through the book. My main complaint was the pace. I felt that it was too slow. Not enough action. It's hard to imagine because there is so much potential in the character. I've seen readers compare these books to Lisbeth Salander from Steig Larsson's Millennium series. I really enjoyed that series. I think Livia could get that good. Unfortunately, it did not happen this time for me. The parts with Dox were the best parts. I think they were better because his character is so well developed from the John Rain books. I think Livia could be a great stand alone character given a better story line and more action. The best scenario would be combining John Rain, Dox, and Livia into one story line. Superhero films are doing it why can't Barry Eisler do the same with his characters?

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    1. Hey Ryan! I agree the parts with Dox were the best. I really enjoyed book one a lot. Depressing, yes, but for me, was well done. I haven't read any of these other series to know but I'll take you on your word :). I find that second books in these types of series usually aren't as powerful or as good. Fingers crossed it gets better. I'll definitely give book 3 a go and see.

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