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WORK TITLE: The Cruelty
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.thecruelty.net/
CITY:
STATE: CO
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.amaamsliterary.com/scott-bergstrom/ * http://thecrueltybook.com/ * https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/68782-ya-debut-gets-six-figure-deal-sold-to-16-territories-and-jerry-bruckheimer.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2016062049
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016062049
HEADING: Bergstrom, Scott
000 00296nz a2200109n 450
001 10307997
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008 161114n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2016062049
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |e rda
100 1_ |a Bergstrom, Scott
670 __ |a The cruelty, 2017: |b ECIP title page (Scott Bergstrom)
PERSONAL
Married; children: daughters.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and photographer. Former advertising executive, until c. 2013.
WRITINGS
The Cruelty has been translated into foreign languages, including Finnish, German, Dutch, and French.
The Cruelty had been optioned for film by Paramount Pictures Corporation, 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
Scott Bergstrom was an advertising executive when he decided to switch careers in 2013. At the time, he had a few pages of a novel written. “I thought there was no more drama to be had writing advertising copy and I wanted to try something different,” Bergstrom told Publishers Weekly Online contributor Sue Corbett. Bergstrom completed his first novel, titled The Cruelty, and published it under an limited liability company he formed called NuCodex Publishing.
By choosing to self-publish, Bergstrom avoided the possibility that young adult (YA) publishers might resist the story as unsuitable. In addition, he was able to display his book at the October 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair. Exposure at book fairs was part of Bergstrom’s plan to produce a best seller. He chose to write a thriller, the type of book most often optioned for film adaptation. Hitting the young adult market, he also made the main character a teenager. Bergstrom used “tried-and-true tropes from previously successful books/movies,” noted Medium Web site contributor Erica Verrillo, who added: “The moral to this story — think ahead.”
Bergstrom garnered initial publisher interest in Europe, where The Cruelty would be published in several foreign languages. Bergstrom landed an agent in the United States as well. The Cruelty was sold at an auction in which six publishers participated. The winning publishers also won the rights to a sequel Bergstrom was working on. In addition, The Cruelty was optioned for film by Paramount Pictures with famed Hollywood producer Jeremy Bruckheimer attached to the deal. Bruckheimer has produced films such as Top Gun and Pirates of the Caribbean. “I was sitting in the DMV when I got the call about the film deal,” Bergstrom told Publishers Weekly Online contributor Corbett. “That was quite a moment. But the real beauty is to have an American publisher who completely understands the project in exactly the way I had always hoped a publisher would.”
The Cruelty features Gwendolyn Bloom, a seventeen-year-old gymnast who has attended numerous schools because of her dad’s job in the U.S. Department of State as a foreign diplomat. Gwendolyn’s mother died when she was ten years old. “The memories she has of that day, filled with terror and confusion, won’t stop,” noted a YA Books and More Web site contributor. Gwendolyn and her father live in New York now, but one night when she comes home from school her father is not there. After several more nights have passed without her father showing up, it becomes obvious that something is drastically wrong. Her father has vanished.
It turns out that Gwendolyn’s father was just not just a state department official. Gwendolyn learns the truth when men from the U.S. government show up looking for him and conduct a search of his papers and computers. The government is concerned that Gwendolyn’s father may not have just disappeared but may have defected and is no longer working for the U.S. government. When the CIA eventually appears to lose interest in recovering her father, Gwendolyn sets out on her own to save him.
Fortunately for Gwendolyn, she meets an Israeli agent while in Europe looking for her father. The agent trains her in subterfuge and in Krav Maga, a military style of self-defense and fighting used by the Israel Defense Forces. Noting that the “premise… demands a degree of suspended disbelief,” a Publishers Weekly went on to commend Bergstrom for making Gwendolyn’s “transformation from high school student to assassin” believable.
Gwendolyn delves into the underworld of Europe and learns that her father has been kidnapped by international gangsters involved in arms smuggling and human trafficking. Eventually, she works her way into the gangsters’ trust and begins working for them. However, Gwendolyn realizes that the longer her father is missing, the more likely that time is running out to find him. It becomes apparent to Gwendolyn that, if she is to save her father, she is going to have test herself physically and emotionally as she embarks on an unsavory journey to save him.
Gwendolyn must pay the price emotionally and physically for the violently and deadly world she enters. “The morality of the book is more complicated than a lot of YA,” Bergstrom told the Daily Dot Web site contributor Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, “In a lot of YA,” observed Bergstrom, “the conflict takes place inside a walled garden, set up by outside adult forces” in a situation that can stand “as a metaphor for high school.” Bergstrom went on to explain that he “wanted to depart from” from this trope.
“This book goes from zero to 100+ quickly,” wrote a YA Books and More Web site contributor, adding: “The reader’s emotions for the main character jumps for empathy to encouragement to excitement as they see her morph and change.” Amanda Foust, writing for School Library Journal, remarked that the novel’s “strong language, graphic violence, and harrowing situations … make this a better choice for readers ready to tackle mature content.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 21, 2016, review of The Cruelty, p. 111.
School Library Journal, December, 2016, Amanda Foust, review of The Cruelty, p. 116.
ONLINE
Adams Literary, http://www.adamsliterary.com/ (August 25, 2017), brief author profile.
Daily Dot, https://www.dailydot.com/ (November 25, 2015), Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, “How Hyped New Author Scott Bergstrom Infuriated the YA Literature Community.”
Medium, https://medium.com/ (March 14, 2016), Erica Verrillo, “YA Debut Gets Six Figure Deal: How Did Scott Bergstrom Do It?”
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (November 24, 2015), Sue Corbett, “YA Debut Gets Six-Figure Deal, Sold to 16 Territories and Jerry Bruckheimer.”
The Cruelty Web site, http://www.thecruelty.net/ (August 25, 2017).
YA Books and More, http://naomibates.blogspot.com (April 26, 2017), review of The Cruelty.
Scott Bergstrom is a traveler, photographer, and writer who lives in Colorado with his wife and daughters. The Cruelty is his fiction debut.
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How hyped new author Scott Bergstrom infuriated the YA literature community
Gavia Baker-Whitelaw— Nov 25, 2015 at 9:42AM | Last updated Dec 11, 2015 at 8:20AM
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joe crawford
Is he for real?
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In the space of just one interview, first-time author Scott Bergstrom has caused widespread ire throughout the young adult literature community.
Bergstrom’s debut novel, The Cruelty, just landed him an impressive six-figure book deal, with Paramount securing the rights to make a film adaptation. His agent compares The Cruelty to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Bourne Identity, describing it as a thriller about a 17-year-old girl trying to rescue her father, a kidnapped diplomat. This sounds like an intriguing premise, but his first interview with Publisher’s Weekly has already alienated a swath of his target audience.
In the interview, Bergstrom downplays the depth and talent needed to write young adult literature. “The morality of the book is more complicated than a lot of YA,” he says. “In a lot of YA, the conflict takes place inside a walled garden, set up by outside adult forces. If you think of those stories as a metaphor for high school, they start to make a lot more sense, but that was one thing I wanted to depart from.”
Of course many bestselling YA novels tackle complex topics like war and terminal illness. In response, YA fans and authors have flooded the #MorallyComplicatedYA hashtag with critiques (and mockery) of his comments.
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Victoria/V.E. Schwab ✔ @veschwab
The good news is, there are so many amazing #MorallyComplicatedYA out there that I'll never have time to read Bergstrom's.
10:23 AM - Nov 25, 2015
7 7 Replies 103 103 Retweets 262 262 likes
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Daniel José Older ✔ @djolder
The real charming thing about that #MorallyComplicatedYA article is that it ends with a Hunger Games diss, and HG was morally complicated af
11:45 PM - Nov 24, 2015
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Mike Jung @Mike_Jung
I know I'm not the first to ask this today, but, er, doesn't #MorallyComplicatedYA describe the majority of YA? The OVERWHELMING majority?
11:21 PM - Nov 24, 2015
2 2 Replies 31 31 Retweets 87 87 likes
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Patrick Ness ✔ @Patrick_Ness
"I've never read any other YA, no, why do you ask?" http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/68782-ya-debut-gets-six-figure-deal-sold-to-16-territories-and-jerry-bruckheimer.html …
8:44 PM - Nov 24, 2015
Photo published for YA Debut Gets Six-Figure Deal, Sold to 16 Territories and Jerry Bruckheimer
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Patrick Ness ✔ @Patrick_Ness
Waking up to my Morally Simplistic Thanksgiving Visit. Having Morally Simplistic Fruit Loops. After a Morally Simplistic Pee.
11:10 AM - Nov 25, 2015
3 3 Replies 13 13 Retweets 78 78 likes
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In the context of other commentary on YA lit, Bergstrom’s interview also takes on an unfortunately gendered tone. As a community dominated by women and girls, YA is frequently dismissed as frivolous and simple. There’s an unavoidably sexist undertone to a male author denigrating a genre dominated by female authors and audiences, all while getting a lucrative book deal to write in that same genre.
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Maureen Johnson ✔ @maureenjohnson
SOME GUY: I invented the female action character!
US: ?
SOME GUY: You can be heroes too! First, you get skinny...
US: Can we stop you there?
11:13 AM - Nov 25, 2015
6 6 Replies 258 258 Retweets 528 528 likes
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Amanda Panitch @AmandaPanitch
:( I wish I knew how to write violence & morally ambiguous girl protagonists. If only I were a man! #MorallyComplicatedYA
10:26 PM - Nov 24, 2015
3 3 Replies 46 46 Retweets 195 195 likes
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It doesn’t help that in The Cruelty‘s sample chapter, the protagonist appears to criticize dystopian YA novels like The Hunger Games and Divergent.
“I pull a book out of my backpack and lean against the door as the train shoots through the tunnel under the river for Queens. It’s a novel with a teenage heroine set in a dystopian future. Which novel in particular doesn’t matter because they’re all the same. Poor teenage heroine, having to go to war when all you really want is to write in your diary about how you’re in love with two different guys and can’t decide between them. These novels are cheesy, I know, and I suck them down as easily as milk.”
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Elsewhere in the excerpt, the heroine muses on men wolf-whistling her on the street: “They love this—the school uniform, the flash of seventeen-year-old legs.” Combined with the character’s strategic weight loss (a key aspect of her transformation into a “lean warrior”), this felt more than a little offputting to fans of other female-led YA novels.
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Katherine Rundell @kdbrundell
Am broadly a bit anti-burning-books - BUT I'd consider lightly singeing the ones in which overweight girls get thin to meet their destiny.
11:20 AM - Nov 25, 2015
9 9 Replies 93 93 Retweets 192 192 likes
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Ludi Val @ludi_val
god the way they're talking about her weight loss as making her badass & empowered is the grossest thing #MorallyComplicatedYA
7:57 AM - Nov 25, 2015
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For a book that hasn’t actually been released yet, this intense level of criticism may seem overly harsh. Hundreds of YA fans are piling on to Twitter to complain about a book they haven’t had a chance to read, based on a single interview and some quotes from the book’s sample chapter.
However, this frustration didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. The YA genre already has a hard time being taken seriously by outsiders, and Bergstrom isn’t winning himself any new fans by insulting YA audiences in his own book announcement. And judging by the number of popular authors frequenting the #MorallyComplicatedYA hashtag, Bergstrom may find himself feeling lonely at his first YA lit conventions. Here’s hoping he familiarizes himself with the genre before his first book comes out.
Scott Bergstrom is a traveler, photographer, lover of cats, hater of all bugs except spiders, believer in intellectual honesty, proponent of irony, opponent of irony, connoisseur of coffee and coffee-flavored substances, and writer of stories who lives with his wife and daughters in Colorado. This is his fiction debut.
YA Debut Gets Six-Figure Deal, Sold to 16 Territories and Jerry Bruckheimer
By Sue Corbett | Nov 24, 2015
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Jason A. Knowles
Author Scott Bergstrom.
A six-figure deal for North American rights to The Cruelty is the latest in a string of good things that have happened to Scott Bergstrom’s debut novel in just the past month. The manuscript, self-published a year ago, caught fire in October at the Frankfurt Book Fair with sales, so far, into 16 territories. “Every morning I wake up to more exciting e-mails,” said his agent, Tracey Adams of Adams Literary.
The buzz that those foreign sales generated ignited interest from Hollywood. In late October, Paramount secured the film rights, with Jerry Bruckheimer attached. (Yes, that Jerry Bruckheimer – Pirates of the Caribbean, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop.)
And, now, Bergstrom has a U.S. publisher for his thriller, which Adams describes as a “YA Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets The Bourne Identity, with a dash of Homeland.” (Adams said she got one offer for the book based on nothing more than that description.) Jean Feiwel of Macmillan’s Feiwel and Friends won the book, plus a sequel, in a six-house auction. Publication is scheduled for winter 2017.
Bergstrom, a former advertising executive who had “created campaigns for everything from pizza to democracy,” decided to switch careers in 2013 with just the idea for the novel and a few pages written. “I thought there was no more drama to be had writing advertising copy and I wanted to try something different,” he said. He’s currently working on the sequel, titled The Greed.
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“When all the deals from Frankfurt started rolling in, it was really gratifying to know that, for example, the Finns thought it was a smart business decision to translate my book into Finnish,” said Bergstrom, a Denver-based father of two. “And I was sitting in the DMV when I got the call about the film deal. That was quite a moment. But the real beauty is to have an American publisher who completely understands the project in exactly the way I had always hoped a publisher would. To hear their enthusiasm made all the difference.”
Bergstrom’s heroine is Gwendolyn Bloom, a Jewish, slightly overweight 17-year-old, who is transformed into a “lean warrior with hair dyed fire-engine red,” during her mission to rescue her father, a kidnapped diplomat. Her search takes her into Europe’s most dangerous slums, and into contact with gangsters, spies, and arms dealers.
Bergstrom initially self-published the book because he thought it might meet resistance from traditional YA publishers. Gwendolyn faces “all sorts of morally ambiguous choices,” and often shoots first, asks questions later. “The morality of the book is more complicated than a lot of YA so I wanted to try doing it on my own,” Bergstrom said. “In a lot of YA, the conflict takes place inside a walled garden, set up by outside adult forces. If you think of those stories as a metaphor for high school, they start to make a lot more sense, but that was one thing I wanted to depart from.”
After self-publishing the story, he realized that writing was easier than navigating the distribution channels his book would need in order to reach a wide audience. The freelance editor he had originally hired to copyedit the manuscript, Maya Packard, had an idea for his next step: she gave a copy to her neighbor, Tracey Adams.
“Maya told me, ‘You have to read this,’ ” Adams said, who said the novel needed almost no editing. She decided to “go out big,” simultaneously e-mailing the manuscript to co-agents who could pitch it in Frankfurt, to Hollywood via Stephen Moore of the Paul Kohner Agency, and to U.S. publishers.
Feiwel entered the picture indirectly and behind the eight ball. She was headed home from work one day when she got a message from Venetia Gosling, her counterpart at Macmillan U.K., who heard the Frankfurt buzz and wanted to know what Feiwel knew about Bergstrom’s novel.
Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel.
“I was on the train going home on a Wednesday and thought, ‘Oh, shoot me. How did we not know about this?’ ” Feiwel recalled. She and the “intrepid, fantastic” Liz Szabla, v-p and editor-in-chief at Feiwel and Friends, got the manuscript from Adams that evening with a warning that the auction for North American rights was heated, full of heavyweights, and two days away.
Szabla read the novel overnight and called Bergstrom Thursday. Macmillan’s Liz Fithian and Allison Verost pulled together a marketing plan “nearly instantaneously.” Late Friday, Adams called Feiwel.
“She began with one of those lines that you never want to hear: ‘This has been a very hard decision,’ ” Feiwel recalled. “But then she said, ‘You had us at hello.’ ” While other publishers had some concerns about the level of violence in The Cruelty, Bergstrom felt the Macmillan team completely understood his character’s motivation.
“There is a body count, but I was more interested in the aspect of a girl figuring out her identity,” Feiwel said. “Other publishers wanted to tone down the violence, but this is a superhero story. That’s why the movies bought it. And I wanted her to get the bad guys. In terms of empowerment, it’s very satisfying.”
Adams said she, too, thought that Gwen would get a lot of leeway from readers because of her mission’s goal. “She’s going to do whatever it takes to save her dad and that was good enough for me,” Adams said. “Kicking butt to save your dad is actually a lot easier for me to swallow than kids killing kids in The Hunger Games.”
Erica VerrilloFollow
Helping writers get published and bolstering their flagging spirits at http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/
Mar 14, 2016
YA Debut Gets Six-Figure Deal: How did Scott Bergstrom Do It?
Medium
Scott Bergstrom made publishing news last November when his debut novel, The Cruelty, got a six-figure advance with attached movie rights.
Scott originally self-published his book, but not in the usual fashion. As an advertising executive, Scott knew that marketing was everything. He formed a LLC, NuCodex Publishing, which allowed him to display his book at the Frankfurt Book Fair. It generated a huge amount of interest, grabbing the attention of an agent — and Hollywood.
What is interesting about Scott’s self-publishing story is that he planned on making a bestseller from the start. He did not spend time querying agents (which may have taken years). Instead he built success with careful planning.
First he chose to write a thriller (great for film adaptations), with a teenage main character (YA is very popular), using tried-and-true tropes from previously successful books/movies.
Then he drew on his own experience as a marketer to catapult his book into the limelight. And he began his plan when he had only written a few pages.
The moral to this story — think ahead.
School Library Journal
BERGSTROM, Scott. The Cruelty. 384p. Feiwel & Friends. Feb. 2017. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9781250108180.
Gr 10 Up--Gwendolyn Bloom, 17, is an outsider at an elite New York private school. Shortly after the anniversary of her mother's gang rape and death in Algiers, her stepfather disappears while traveling for his government job. When U.S. officials fail to find him, Gwendolyn strikes out on her own, and her journey takes her to Paris, then Berlin, and finally Prague as she explores a dark world of assassins, spies, and criminals. Over the course of the narrative, she quickly transforms from a wallflower who speaks five languages and loves jazz to a hardened young adult pursuing justice. Originally self-published in 2014, this is Bergstrom's debut novel and the first in a planned series. He excels at establishing scenes and locations in vivid detail, but the story suffers from overwriting and is in need of strong editing. Many characters do not advance the plot and soon disappear. Gwendolyn's metamorphosis and ability to almost single-handedly rescue her father, a character barely introduced before he disappears, in combination with her quickness to resort to violence and murder, are convenient but not believable. VERDICT The consistent strong language, graphic violence, and harrowing situations, including human trafficking and rape, make this a better choice for readers ready to tackle mature content, but the book's poor execution overall makes this an easy pass.--Amanda Foust, Consultant, Littleton, CO
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Foust, Amanda. "Bergstrom, Scott. The Cruelty." School Library Journal, Dec. 2016, p. 116+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472370668&it=r&asid=576aeb5f65d287ae3252821590349302. Accessed 27 Aug. 2017.The Cruelty
Publishers Weekly.
263.47 (Nov. 21, 2016): p111.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Cruelty
Scott Bergstrom. Feiwel and Friends, $18.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-250-10818-0
Liam Neeson's 2008 film Taken concerned a spy who engages in mass mayhem while attempting to recover
his kidnapped daughter. Bergstrom reverses this plot in his violent, well-crafted first novel. Seventeen-yearold
gymnast Gwendolyn Bloom doesn't learn that her father is a genuine spy--and not merely an
overworked State Department employee--until after he is kidnapped by international gangsters, and the CIA
makes little attempt to recover him. Vowing to find her father, Gwen heads for Europe, where she is
intercepted by a tough Israeli agent who trains her in Krav Maga and spycraft. The seedy, back-alley Europe
that Gwen moves through comes alive as she traces her father to Prague and gains employment with his
murderous captors. It's a premise that demands a degree of suspended disbelief, but Bergstrom manages
Gwen's transformation from high school student to assassin believably enough, and he doesn't avoid the toll
Gwen's actions take on her. Not for the weak of heart, this is a grim, fast-paced tale that stands knee-deep in
dead bodies. Ages 17-up. Agent: Tracey Adams, Adams Literary. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Cruelty." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 111. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471274038&it=r&asid=74ae3c944c6c4452acf8ba49a018c5f2.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471274038
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom
Fiewel and Friends, 2017
Gwendolyn Bloom isn't enjoying school today. Being pointed out by "that girl" and her friends while everyone else laughs at you isn't what she planned or wanted. But this is just another stop along the string of schools she has attended, which may or may not last long. It's on days like this she wishes her mother was there, but she can't be. When Gwendolyn was ten years old, her mother passed away. The memories she has of that day, filled with terror and confusion, won't stop.
Her father, who is a foreign diplomat, has taken Gwendolyn around the world. New York is the current place they call home. Without a mother, her father is the only parent she has and she treasures that. But one evening, after coming home, her father isn't there....nor the next night...and Gwendolyn keeps waiting. Eventually she is taken in by the older Jewish couple in loco parentis until her father shows up. And things take a turn....
One day, while Gwendolyn is alone in her apartment, a knock is heard. Behind it are men in black searching for her father, but also through his papers and computers, asking her what he's told her about his job. They're from the US government and for the first time, Gwendolyn is realizes what her father does. The men looking for him are wondering is he still a spy for them or has he defected? The last known place in Europe he was detected was recorded before he went off the grid.
With only a scrap of information Gwendolyn stops at nothing to find her father. With some help, she begins training in krav maga with a Mossad agent before getting entangled in the dark and dirty world of racketeers, arms smuggling and human trafficking. One clue leads to another. Gwendolyn knows she's running out of time...unless it's already too late.
This book goes from zero to 100+ quickly. The reader's emotions for the main character jumps for empathy to encouragement to excitement as they see her morph and change into someone who will pull out all the stops. The dark world of criminals makes a large nod in this novel including introducing minor characters, all victims of human trafficking. It's not sugar coated, but it isn't gratuitously graphic is nature either. Teens reading this book may begin to connect with what's happening in the real world and see a larger picture. Although others may see the rising action as a tad unbelievable, I enjoyed every page. It reads like a Jason Bourne novel, only with a kick a** female character. Recommended for upper JH/HS