The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

This book did not work for me. I admit I had a hard time not comparing it to the Stephanie Plum series (that I adore).

Kate O'Hare is a badass FBI agent and Nick Fox was a 'mission impossible' kind of criminal. Kate has been trying to catch/arrest Nick for years... and they have that kindergarten kind of relationship where they think each other are attractive and Nick flirts but Kate hates Nick.

The biggest issue I had with this book was that every single aspect of the book was outlandish. So let's give this a proper review:

(view spoiler)Kate eventually catches Nick for stealing the Crimson Teardrop (a diamond) but what Nick doesn't know is that Kate was on top of her game and knowing that Nick would go after it, she replaced it with a cubic zirconia and to catch him, she hit him with a bus.

On the way to the courtroom, Nick asks to use the restroom to which he ends up escaping and fleeing to Mount Athos - "a mountainous, inhospitable, rocky peninsula that is thirty miles long, ranging from 4 to 8 miles wide, and pounded by the Aegean Sea on three sides" - a part of Greece that is inaccessible by land and who hasn't accepted woman for thousands of years -not even female creatures are allowed. Assuming he is there, Kate jumps out of a plane in the middle of the night to catch her man - and guess what, he was there and so are her bosses!! However, instead of arresting him like they've wanted to do for years, they decide to join forces with Nick to perform a con to catch a bigger criminal. They enlisted a bunch of nobody's to work with them who don't mind breaking the law, going to jail indefinitely or being killed in the process - every person they approached agreed immediately to these terms. Including Kate, the badass FBI agent.

They set the stage for said con and then act on it by immediately kidnapping and holding a hostage while using scare tactics to make him talk - and he does. So they set off to find their man who is hiding out on an Indonesian island and rent a yacht to sail the seas in hopes of catching him. Along the way there are pirates and many other outlandish happenings... it was all too far-fetched for me to even enjoy.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

This was a tragic story about a woman, Agnes, who was sentenced to death (beheaded) for killing Natan, the man she loved. She was locked in a little cell with no light, little food, no clean clothes, no shower, no fresh air and a lot of stench before she was taken to a farm to live out the rest of her sentence. While she was at the farm she slowly opened up and little by little told her story, at first to her spiritual adviser, Toti, and then to Margaret. By the end of the book, I grew to love Agnes and her story moved me. I don't want to give away any of the ending but I will tell you that the end of this book was written so well, I don't think I'll ever forget it. Two days later after I've finished reading it and I still find myself thinking about it.

I did have a hard time with the names in this book; the names of the farms, the towns, the people. It's much easier for me to read about Austin, TX than it is about Hvammstangi, Iceland (which I don't believe was in the book but since I couldn't think of a single name I could spell haha, I googled).

This is a definite recommend.