Nobody could be so callous and remain untouched.

Cloak and Dagger by Nenia Campbell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading about terrible things happening to someone is rarely a cheerful experience. But there's a very special ill feeling that comes when a story demands an answer to the question, "What would I have done?"

Eighteen-year-old Christina Parker is the kind of person that I would have loved to befriend as a teenager. She likes gaming, computer programming, Don Quixote and Harry Potter. She has both a strong sense of faith and a questioning mind, and her long-time struggle with an overly critical mother has given her a backbone and a sharp tongue. Her life seems normal, until the day that she is kidnapped by an agent of a secretive organization called the IMA. What follows is a brutal ordeal in which Christina is used as a pawn as the IMA tries to get what they want out of Christina's family, who have secrets of their own. But being a pawn is not a role that suits her, and she causes plenty of grief to her captor - the expert assassin Michael Boutilier.

In contrast to the common trope of an asshole who turns out to have a heart of gold, Michael is an asshole who turns out to have the heart of an asshole. What's interesting about him are the little jabs of doubt that he experiences when Christina's pain starts to mean something to him. The realization doesn't instantaneously (or even gradually) turn him into a gentleman, but it tugs at his priorities and confuses his previously icy, decisive mind. Whether he will accept that empathy is a natural part of being human, or shun it as a weakness that could get him killed, is a central conflict of the story.

I'll admit that the first half of the book didn't continuously hold my attention. At times it felt like a repetitive pattern of fighting, passing out, waking up, trying to escape, fighting, etc. I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief quite enough to be convinced by the IMA. There were also some typos and oddly-constructed sentences that I found a little distracting.

However, around the middle of the book things started to click as the relationships between Christina, her parents, Michael, and other characters start to change. Trust crumbles and is re-forged in new ways, and feelings slowly build. It's not a question of if something will happen between Michael and Christina, but a question of when and how and what the consequences will be, and that makes it all the more addictive.

I really appreciate Nenia Campbell's refusal to gloss over the ugly and morally ambiguous parts of the characters' behavior, or to ignore the scars that such behavior leaves behind. The ending of the book has haunted me since I finished it, and I'm sure it will stay that way until I get my hands on the sequel.

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