Title: Best Laid Plans Author: Stylo Fantôme
Series: The Mercenaries #1
Release date: September 7th 2015
(Sub)genres: Military
Pages: 322
Buy: Amazon US
Rating:
THE PLAN:
* Smuggle diamonds from Liberia to Morocco
* Make the trip in three days
* Don't get caught
* Don't kill each other
* Don't have sex with each other
* Don't fall for each other
* Stick to the planThis is the story of what happens when an unlikely bond is formed between enemies, causing tensions to rise, and igniting a chemistry that threatens to burn them both. Together, they'll learn that sometimes even the best laid plans can fail.
Liliana ‘Lily’ Brewster has one mission in life – revenge. Revenge for the death of her sister. In order to accomplish that goal, she has spent the last five years earning the trust of the Bravta – the Russian mob – as a mercenary. Lily is one bad-ass heroine. She has trained hard to get where she is, and she is very good at what she does. To her annoyance, she feels herself very attracted to Marcelle ‘Marc’ De Sant, another mercenary working for the Bravta. Lust isn’t a distraction she wants or needs, but resisting Marc isn’t a possibility.
“She had a mission, something she had to do. Something she needed to do. Something she had been planning for five years. She couldn’t risk ruining it by chasing after a boy. She couldn’t…”
Marc is a mercenary, plain and simple. For the right amount of money he’ll do whatever a client wants him to do. After his parents were killed by a hurricane while living in Haiti, he quickly got involved with the dark side of human nature at a young age. Although Marc lives a rough and brutal life, months on end in the less stellar places of this world, he still can enjoy the finer things in life. Meeting Lily during a dangerous job isn’t something he anticipated, but he can’t do anything but give in to his urges.
“But they chatted and they flirted and they danced around each other. Became friends. He liked her, h supposed. He didn’t like many people.”
After they have shared a long night of hot sex, Marc believes Lily seduced him and left him to be taken out by local criminals. The ruthless mercenary he is, he immediately sets out take his revenge on Lily and make her pay for what he believed she did. After a not so happy ‘reunion’, the couple quickly pieces together what actually happened and decides to travel together with some rules and boundaries in order to prevent distraction. Of course, the rules and boundaries they have set are meant to be broken, they just can’t stay away from each other.
The story being told in Best Laid Plans reads like an action movie with not only a hot bad-ass hero, but also an equally bad-ass heroine who’s just as ruthless. I’ve truly enjoyed this story, being told in the familiar writing style of Stylo Fantome I have learned to love in the Kane trilogy. Besides Lily and Marc, I really liked Marc’s colleague Kingsley. A man very different from Marc, but not any less attractive.
“Just you wait, Marcelle De Sant. I’ll be the best anyone in this business has ever seen. Just you fucking wait.”
Since this is part of a series, the story being told isn’t finished yet. I can’t wait for December 15th when the second part of the story, Out of Plans, will be published. I need to know what happens next to Lily, Marc, and also Kingsley. For the people who really want to know: yes, this book ends in a cliffhanger, but honestly, I consider this a very mild one.
I give this action-packed, refreshing story 4 stars.
