Like a bullet from a gun, the action in Sheena Kamal’s No Going Back takes off at full speed from the very first pages and does not let up! This third installment in the saga of Nora Watts, following The Lost Ones and It All Falls Down, will still more than satisfy as a stand-alone for those who have not yet started this series. The unrelenting tension carries the reader along from Detroit to Canada and to Southeast Asia in this heart-pounding thriller.
My one and only caution about this book is do not read the back-cover copy! More than once as I picked the book up, I looked at the summary on the back cover and then set that book back down. In short paragraphs on the back of a book, it feels like too much is going to be thrown at you. It’s overwhelming. It feels exhausting.
The book, however, sets the pace exactly right. Everything the back-cover copy describes is going to happen, but the way the novel lays it out is not overwhelming and instead, it is a perpetual motion machine in book-form. The intrigue and excitement do not stop. Adventure, action, betrayal, and surprises are around every corner.
Nora Watts is one of those people who trouble always seems to find. She reminded me occasionally of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, but a darker, more flawed character begins to emerge. Watts is certainly fearless, and she has to be as her enemies are powerful underworld figures, in particular a specific triad enforcer called Dao. There is so much mutual hatred and fury between these two characters, it practically drips off the page.
Watts doesn’t just have enemies, though. She has some powerful, if sometimes uneasy or uncomfortable, allies as well. With a target on her back, Watts must hunt down the man who is also hunting her so that (just maybe) she can stop always looking over her shoulder.
Sheena Kamal is an award-winning author, and it is easy to see why. Her novels are powerful as well as entertaining. Featuring LGBTQ representation as well as sensitive, yet thorough, discussions of racial and cultural tensions, Kamal is an author who should be on everyone’s TBR list.
No Going Back is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From Strand Critics Award winner Sheena Kamal, comes the third novel featuring the brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts whose vendetta against a triad enforcer escalates when he places a target on her daughter’s back.
Find your enemy. Before he finds you.
Nora Watts has a talent for seeing what lies beneath strangers’ surfaces, and for knowing what they are working hard to keep hidden. Somehow, it’s the people closest to her she has trouble truly connecting with. In the case of Bonnie, the teenage daughter Nora gave up for adoption, she has to keep trying. For Bonnie has a target on her back – and it’s all because of Nora.
Two years ago, Bonnie was kidnapped by the wealthy Zhang family. Though Nora rescued her, she made a powerful enemy in Dao, a mysterious triad enforcer and former head of the Zhang’s private security. Now Dao is out for revenge, and she needs to track him down in order to keep herself – and Bonnie – safe.
On Dao’s trail, Nora forms an unlikely partnership with Bernard Lam, an eccentric playboy billionaire with his own mysterious grudge to bear, and reunites with Jon Brazuca, ex-cop turned private investigator and Nora’s occasional ally. From Canada to Southeast Asia they pursue Dao, uncovering a shadowy criminal cabal. But soon, the trail will lead full circle to Vancouver, the only home Nora’s ever known, and right to the heart of her brutal past.
