Zapata
by Harper McDavid
Paperback: 356 pages
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing (September 25, 2019)
When engineer Avery McAndrews is offered a last-minute assignment to the rough and tumble border town of Zapata, Texas, she doesn’t think twice. Used to pushing past stereotypes, she’s sure this project will earn the long-awaited promotion.
Instead, she’s thrown in the crossfire between warring drug cartels and soon discovers that her captor, Javier Ramos, is more than just a power hungry drug lord. He’s crazy.
As lead attorney for the cartel, it’s Alejandro DeLeon’s job to manage Javier. But this time, Javier’s cruelty reaches epic proportions, and Alejandro finds himself wanting to risk everything to save Avery.
Running for their lives with Mexico’s underworld at their heels, Avery and Alejandro discover unintended and intensifying emotions, feelings neither sought and neither seem prepared to control…
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Gaudy was the second thing that came to mind. First was no way. No way was she spending a night in this room. Her skin itched just looking at it. She shot Alejandro a dirty look in the mirror headboard designed to resemble a Mayan temple. The base of the temple was a collection of greasy imprints from the heads of previous guests. The mattress slumped woefully in the middle. Any more sag and the thing could be mistaken for a canoe.
… she’d been rejected. She hated it. Rejection was agonizing hell. It made legends out of poets and filled psychology textbooks.
My Review:
I’m always astounded when a debut author produces a polished and well-honed tale; color me flabbergasted, as this is one of those times. The storylines were uniquely intriguing, highly eventful, and advanced at an intermittent pace with rather unexpected bursts of activity, gunfire, daring and narrow escapes, cringe-worthy threats, brutal violence, kidnapping, betrayals, a blossoming romance with no future, and considerable subterfuge and duplicity on every level.
I was quickly sucked into Avery’s perilous vortex and was right there with her in the heat and grit, taut with tension. No one seemed at all trustworthy while those who should have been, weren’t; which only left the naïve yet feisty main character of Avery with the desperate and risky choice of depending on someone who shouldn’t have been, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The adrenalin and activity levels were often high with a large cast of compelling yet slippery and tersely spoken characters who were edgy and tightly wound, which kept ratcheting up that ever-present sense of jeopardy and danger lurking around every corner. The plot was complex, multi-layered, and loaded with intriguing and unusual situations as well as confounding and disheartening obstacles such as language barriers, corruption at every level, a large bounty, unstable yet powerful and well-connected criminals, significant injuries, and Avery’s conflicted feelings and perplexity over the role and motivation of the person helping her and her bewildering feelings toward him – was he her savior or another level of captor. I wasn’t sure about him myself and seemed unable to put my Kindle down until I knew for sure.
About the Author
As a child, Harper McDavid watched her mother ride the rollercoaster of writing books, swearing she’d never do it herself. But some things are just hardwired, and luckily for Harper the world has moved on beyond typewriters and ten-pound manuscripts.
Harper’s gritty romantic suspense incorporates her own background in science and engineering and work experience along the border. The result is a collection of brainy hard hat-wearing heroines that occasionally swap out their coveralls for the little black dress.
Harper is the mother of three daughters and lives in the foothills of Colorado with her husband, two dogs, and a fat cat. Her free time is spent traveling the world in search of that next story and perusing her local library for funny book covers.
Find out more about Harper at her website, and connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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I am always astounded when a debut novelist blows me out of the water with their book, you can tell that some people were just meant to write. Great review.
I absolutely love debut authors – it’s so fun seeing someone’s writing style for the first time. And when they create a book that’s not only a great story, but well-written, that’s an added bonus. This one looks great! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I love when a debut author shocks me with an amazing store!
I love books with lots of duplicity. Keeps me guessing the whole time and makes me want to know how it turns out in the end.
Thanks for being on this tour!
Amazing review my friend, this is the first time I have heard or seen this book and it looks and sounds like an amazing book and right up my alley as well. I’m really glad you fully enjoyed reading this book. Thank you so much for sharing your awesome post and for putting this book on my radar.
Great review!
Omg color me shocked too. What a review. And this was a debut which got such massive praise from you? This so huge so freaking huge. Wow the book must havE been adrenaline filled as you certainly were