Every Last Breath

March 1, 2019
A covert operations agent must confront her demons as she partners with a man from her past to intercept a biological weapon in this debut romance.Maddox Kinkade hasn't had it easy in nearly a decade. She lost her fiance and betrayed his family in an effort to gain her CIA-agent father's love. Instead, the process nearly killed her with grief, and she steeled herself to become an operative for the Gray Box, a government-sanctioned agency that specializes in secret world-saving missions. Her latest assignment is stopping the sale of a new strain of smallpox, and the first step is tracking down a man named Cole Matthews. But not only is Cole resistant to working with any sort of government agency, he also turns out to be the man Maddox loved and inadvertently double-crossed nine years ago. To complicate matters even more than a fiance coming back from the dead and a world on the brink of biological warfare is a string of assassinations occurring around the globe. Cole and Maddox have to contend with the dangers of acquiring a bioweapon while addressing the baggage that tore them apart as younger adults. Rushdan is a fresh, exciting voice with a talent for action-packed pacing and complicated entanglements. With a dizzying amount of jargon and acronyms for the reader to keep straight, the book sometimes gets bogged down by bureaucracy, though the scenes between Cole and Maddox are thick with tension. It's a promising start to both a new romantic suspense series and a new writer in the genre, as all the separate subplots reach their aha moments and come together in an edge-of-your seat conclusion.A romantic thriller that handily juggles emotional intensity and a heart-pounding, James Bond-ian adventure.

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Starred review from March 18, 2019
Rushdan’s fast-paced, gripping debut will hold readers’ attention from start to finish. When Gray Box, a top-secret offshoot of the CIA, learns that weaponized smallpox will be sold at an upcoming auction for high-profile criminal buyers, officer Maddox Kinkad is assigned to recruit Cole Matthews as an asset to infiltrate the auction and acquire the lethal weapon. Cole turns out to be Nikolai Resnikov, the man Maddox loved and lost nine years earlier. Her CIA father learned that Nikolai’s family was Russian mafia, and Nikolai faked his own death in order to protect his family and her. Shocked to find Nikolai alive and well, Maddox hides her broken heart and prioritizes her mission. Meanwhile, this unexpected reunion makes Nikolai realize he has never stopped loving Maddox. The two highly skilled protagonists race against the clock to avert mass destruction, while sexual tension flares and their love rekindles. Rushdan portrays her mastermind criminal with welcome nuances—he longs to destroy the U.S. government to avenge his loved ones’ deaths—and leaves the identity of an agency mole unresolved, which will have readers eagerly waiting for the sequel to this arresting romantic thriller. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary.