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Review: Peter Darley, Hold On!

7/13/2014

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I just finished Hold On! by Peter Darley—an entertaining combination of thriller and romance.  I had read an earlier draft last year, but I still tore through this final version with pleasure, as it truly was hard to put down.  Chapters are short, so it‘s always easy to go ahead and read the next one, and the gajillion cliffhangers make you want to do that anyway.

Below, therefore, is a review I did at Goodreads:  
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/995034110?book_show_action=false

Rafeeq



Hold On! by Peter Darley is a fun, fast-paced guilty-pleasure read: a roller-coaster thriller of government conspiracy, murderous cover-ups, and cliffhangers, all underlaid with a burgeoning romance between the dashing hero and the damsel he rescues, plus the nagging enigma of the man's mysterious past.

Brandon Drake, grievously wounded saving a fellow soldier in Afghanistan, was sent Stateside and somehow put back together again, but while serving in a military research laboratory he uncovers a terrible secret, and now he has gone AWOL to stop a false-flag terror operation that has already killed dozens, and threatens to serve as the pretext for another war. Belinda Reese, the lonely woman whom Drake rescues from certain death, is captivated by the lone warrior's courage and his good looks, and also by his surprising shyness. On the run from the hired killers directed by a rogue government official, they must struggle to keep their love, their freedom, even their lives.

Really, the plot cannot be summarized much further, for there occur so many twists and turns that spoilers abound. Suffice it to say, then, that there are spy gadgets, disguises, villains, breakneck chases, and hairbreadth escapes. In addition to all the intrigue and action, though, the novel also explores the nature of love, the meaning of duty, and even, on something of a philosophical level, the construction of "self."

Hold On! is an entertaining thriller-romance. It is by turns deadly serious, touching, sometimes even a little silly. The book was very hard to put down, though, and that is a great strength.

13 July 2014

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    Author of several dozen pieces of literary criticism, reference entries, and reviews; novel Student Body; memoir Tiger Hunts, Thunder Bay, and Treasure Chests; how-to The Bibliophile's Personal Library; humorous Have You Ever Been to an Irishman's Shanty?​; some poetry; and quite a bit of advising/Banner training materials.

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