Tag: Self Published

It’s October again, which means it’s time for you (yes, you!) to go and preorder the next book in Jennifer R. Donohue’s Run with the Hunted series of cyberpunk heist novellas. If you aren’t familiar with them, you can read my reviews of the previous novellas right here on this very blog.

I got to read VIP when it was still a Word document by virtue of being actual, real life friends with the author. I’m also an actual, real life big fan of these books, so I’m going to try to split the difference between friend and fan by abandoning my usual review format and using the rest of this post to explain why you should preorder this very good book.

1. You should preorder this very good book because it’s a return to form.

If you read and enjoyed the first Run with the Hunted novella, you’ll enjoy the return to Bristol’s narration. She has a much clearer, more action-focused voice than either Bits or Dolly. That means the book as a whole moves more quickly because we get less monologuing, more plotting.

We also get the return of Will, the well-meaning super secret government agent from book one. It’s fun to see how he’s grown as a person in the intervening months, and how he hasn’t. He only gets a few scenes, but they’re impactful. I’m hoping he gets a bigger role in an upcoming book.

2. You should preorder this very good book because it’s like nothing Jen’s ever written before.

Inspired by a Twitter meme where people share their favorite romance tropes, VIP revolves around a fake engagement that slowly but inevitably builds toward real feelings. I can’t say more without spoilers, but there’s an unusual sweetness to this story. It reminds me somewhat of the resolution of Standard Operating Procedure, except Standard Operating Procedure was 1000% more stressful than VIP is.

VIP is by no means a romantic comedy, but it is the closest to a romantic comedy I think we’re ever going to get out of this series. Let’s cherish it.

3. You should preorder this very good book because it finally reveals Bristol’s real name.

Actually, it reveals quite a lot about Bristol’s past. We still don’t have any details about her family of origin, but a character from her past gets tangled up in her present and shares an origin story of sorts with Bits and Dolly.

There are just enough tantalizing details to seed a really good fanfiction if, say, you wanted to write a story in which Bristol and Dolly kiss and also other things happen.

4. You should preorder this very good book because of the excellent Dolly content.

Listen, word of God from Jen, Bristol’s straight. She and Dolly are never going to kiss outside of my fanfiction, in which other unimportant things also happen, probably.

This is, I think, all the more reason to enjoy Dolly leaning and smoking and smirking at Bristol during Bristol’s wedding festivities. Also, the cute bickering! And the [very romantic moment redacted for spoilers]!!!

Enjoy them loudly, and tag Jen (@AuthorizedMusings) when you do, which is not at all bullying. Authors like it when you enjoy their work!

(Is this a book review? I don’t think this is a book review, but I’m going to put it in that category anyway because it’s close enough.)

Dolly’s book is not at all what I expected. It’s … nice? Which feels weird for the traumatized ex-supersoldier-turned-criminal-weapons-and-vehicles-expert who spent most of the precious books salivating over the prospect of facing off against multiple black ops organizations, but I’m here for it.

For the uninitiated: Run With the Hunted is a cyperpunk novella series about a group of friends (“associates,” Bristol would say) who travel the world, bicker, take care of each other, and sometimes steal literally priceless objects. Each novella is narrated by one of the friends: book one is Bristol’s, book two is Bits’s, and book three is (finally!!!!!) Dolly’s. Also, Dolly is the best.

In Run With the Hunted 3: Standard Operating Procedure, Bristol is still coping with the events of book two, and the rest of her team decides to help her out with that by going along with her very good, very smart, very well considered plan to steal the world’s most expensive dog. Even though none of them know how to take care of a dog. Even though they don’t really know why this particular dog is so valuable or who’s going to be paying them to get her.

This is not important to the plot, but I feel like potential readers should be aware: There are actually two dogs in this book. One is a robot. Both are very good dogs. Neither dies. Like I said, this is a nice book.

In a lot of ways, Standard Operating Procedure feels a prequel. The stakes are lower, and as the most contemplative member of the team, Dolly’s narration is full of flashbacks and character details. We learn what Dolly thinks her life would have looked like if not for the super-solider program, and we learn more about what her life actually has looked like until this point.

The memories of her childhood in the rural south deliver a pitch-perfect blend of nostalgia and despair and yearning. Then someone from her childhood shows up in her present, and that’s perfect too, tense and hopeful and sometimes hilarious.

Other highlights include the incredible action sequence on a bridge that I will be writing fanfiction about until I die and the way Donohue always writes dogs as though she is the world’s foremost dog expert. (She is.)

I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the previous two, as well as to people who are on the fence. If you wanted book one to deliver more found family feelings and you wanted book two to explain things more clearly, you will love book three. Hell, I love this book and its big, tough, secretly soft narrator so much that I’d recommend reading the first two books just to get this one, and I loved the first two books. The only bad thing I can say about this one is that I’m going to have to wait through two more books to return to Dolly’s narration.

More Info

Publisher: Self-published
Paperback Page Count: 156

Follow Jen Donohue on Twitter or her blog for writing updates and pictures of her Doberman. Then you can get the book and support your local independent bookstore on Bookshop.org, or you can buy it on Amazon.

If Run with the Hunted was a lighthearted heist story in the vein of Ocean’s 8, Ctrl Alt Delete is a buddy road trip story similar to Thelma and Louise, minus the sexual assault. The second book in the series manages to raise the stakes not by adding a third or fourth shady government agency, but by making the danger more personal and the path forward even less clear. I was genuinely so worried about Bits (the narrator of this story) and a new side character that I had to put the book down and take a break a couple of times.

An uncertain number of months after the diamond heist, Dolly pulls Bits out of VR immersion—and out of hiding—for a much more personal job. They need to steal Bristol back from the black site where she’s being held before the government realizes exactly who she is. It’s too complicated and dangerous a job for Dolly to do alone, but Bits is suffering from unexplained migraines, lost time, nose bleeds, memory loss, and a strange inability to even hear what happened between the diamond heist and Bristol’s arrest.

Like the first book in the series, Ctrl Alt Delete is fast paced and short enough to read in an afternoon—assuming you don’t have to take breaks because of how worried you are about the characters. I liked getting to know Bits and Dolly (my love! who gets significantly more screen time in this book than the last) more intimately, and I loved the way that new knowledge fills in little gaps and recontextualizes information from the first book. Really, though, the strength of this series is in the relationships between its main cast, and watching Dolly take care of Bits while she recovered made me fall so hard for these women all over again. My only complaint is I wanted it to be at least 20% longer.

Fans of book one will not be disappointed, but I’d recommend book two particularly to fans of found family stories, VR hacking stories, conspiracy theories, and badass women who can easily carry you up and twelve tons of firearms up six flights of stairs while chain smoking and not break a sweat. Now, where is my Dolly book????

Click here to read my review of Run With the Hunted 3: Standard Operating Procedure.

More Info

Publisher: Self-published
Paperback Page Count: 156

Follow Jen Donohue on Twitter or her blog for writing updates and pictures of her Doberman. Then you can get the book and support your local independent bookstore on Bookshop.org, or you can buy it on Amazon.

Run with the Hunted delivers the experience of watching a fast paced, twisty heist movie in a quick novella with characters you don’t want to say goodbye to at the end.

Narrated by Bristol, who studies pirated finishing school classes and hides weapons in her hair pins, it’s the story of a trio of women who accidentally take something more valuable (and more deadly) than just the diamonds they set out to steal. Their fence backs out, and they have to find a new buyer while evading shadowy organizations that want them dead.

I fell in love with the trio (especially weapons-and-guns expert Dolly, who is basically a bisexual Labrador in a bulletproof vest) and their world. As cold and polished as her stolen diamonds, Bristol has never truly gotten to know her associates before she’s forced to hide out with them. Watching a world-class manipulator awkwardly fumble her way towards genuine friendship is heart warming and adorable, even if she’d kill me for saying so.

The cyberpunk setting delivers ‘80s aesthetics—video games, VR goggles, Cold War paranoia—and leaves ‘80s social values in the past, where they belong. Bristol is a traumatized ice queen, but she isn’t waiting for a man to thaw her. Her best friend is a nonbinary gallery owner. There are no happy little suburban nuclear families, and no one gets punished for who they are.

This book is so quick and so much fun that I’d honestly recommend it for everybody, but especially fans of A Fish Called Wanda, Ocean’s 8, vending machines, good cop/femme fatale romances, playing spy at sleepover parties, and reading reviews of Michelin-starred restaurants online because you can’t afford to eat there.

Click here to read my review of Run With the Hunted 2: Ctrl Alt Delete.

More Info

Publisher: Self-published
Paperback Page Count: 136

Follow Jen Donohue on Twitter or her blog for writing updates and pictures of her Doberman. Then you can get the book and support your local independent bookstore on Bookshop.org, or you can buy it on Amazon.