🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ Full spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.
The Opening
I have listened to this book three times. Three. And I would listen to it again. It is funny, fast-paced, completely unexpected, and just a little outside the usual romance lane, which honestly makes it even better.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
Betty and “Tom”
Betty is done. After a year with her fiancé Tom, supposedly an insurance adjuster, she’s leaving. He won’t engage, won’t talk, keeps putting off any real conversation, and the sex… it leaves something to be desired. So she packs up, leaves her engagement ring and a letter on the table, and walks out the door.
And then the condo explodes.
She wakes up in an ambulance. Except the paramedics aren’t real paramedics, and once they notice she’s conscious, they sedate her. She comes to with her hands tied behind her back and two strangers interrogating her about Tom and Wolf. What does wolf mean to you? What do you know about Tom? Which as it turns out, she only knows basic mundane surface-level things.
Then Tom walks in. Except his whole demeanor is different — it’s Tom, but it’s not Tom, maybe his twin? He goes after the guy who was interrogating her, a man they call Spider. Spider has no right to touch Betty. We find out here that Tom is not who he has been pretending to be. Tom’s code name is Wolf. He’s been wearing contacts around Betty and He’s been living a cover the entire relationship- she is his cover. Then he realizes Betty isn’t wearing her ring, she admits she was leaving him, and he tells her she cannot tell anyone that, it’s for her own safety.
They are in a safe house or secret ops building of some sort. Bear and Hawk arrive. They’re trying to reach HQ and can’t get through, which is concerning.
Tom sets Betty up in a room and goes back to working on their problem. Betty wanders out and finds Spider’s body in the hallway. Someone has killed him, it must be someone in their ranks. Tom grabs her and everything she has and gets her out fast.
The Relationship Talk
They are driving for hours so they start actually talking about the relationship. She says fine, you want to do this now? This is why she was leaving. He was not present. He was not really there.
He admits it: he had to maintain a persona. Their sex life was not great. The average couple has sex 51 times a year, and accounting for his time away for work, they met the average — and he seems surprised she had an issue with it. But she says more often than not the sex sucked. His rebuttal? He says most women do not manage to climax every time, he had to maintain the median, the illusion of a normal couple.
She is mad that he deliberately gave her bad sex. He is a monster.
The Gas Station
They stop for gas and snacks and Tom tells her not to get out of the car. Then she sees it: someone is robbing the gas station. He says the car is bulletproof and they will be fine, nothing to worry about — but she is worried about the cashier. She pushes him to do something about it. He tells her to buckle up, runs over the robber’s foot, hits him in the head with the car door, takes the gun, and drives off.
Henry
After a long drive they pull up to what looks like a dilapidated shack. Betty assumes he is going to kill her and tells him to just do it outside, but he says don’t always trust your eyes. Inside is Henry, an old friend of Tom’s. The shack is an entrance to an underground bunker. Tom tells Henry that Betty will be staying with him and that he needs a hacker.
Betty pushes for a gun or a knife but Tom declines. Henry tells him to give her a fighting chance, so Tom teaches her to shoot in Henry’s gun range. He hates every second of it. He never wanted this life to touch her.
Tom also admits that he had seen her weeks before they officially met. He had been following her for a while to make sure she was safe, then approached her at a bar. She asks why. He says it is simple: he liked her smile.
They are finally really talking, and he decides to try to seduce her — which is hilarious, because he has thoroughly infuriated her. He hangs around in a towel and suggests some stress relief, promises “the good stuff this time,” and says he is sorry. She calls him out: he keeps saying sorry without knowing what it means. She does not take him up on it.
Found
Tom goes to talk to the hacker and Betty falls asleep in his absence. Then sirens go off: someone has found them on the mountain. They suspect someone hid a tracker without them knowing. Tom says they need to leave, but Betty asks why not just stay in the bunker. He says he cannot afford to be on lockdown for days — he needs to start making moves.
Henry, on the other hand, has the mountain rigged. He will be sitting in front of his computer blowing things up, or maybe stepping out with a sniper rifle if he gets bored. Henry is not worried at all.
They Escape but not Without Lots of Gunfire and a Few Near Misses.
The Stolen Car
They find a car on the side of the road. Tom says that is their new ride but Betty is upset: they cannot just steal someone’s car. So he leaves a pile of cash in their shot-up car before taking theirs. He figures the bad guys will find the shot-up car and the money long before the actual owners do, and that helps her conscience.
Bear
They arrive at the airport. Bear is there, he is the first one cleared by their new hacker friend. Tom takes Betty to one of his houses, and admits that he owns a few more. His job pays well.
Betty is determined to figure out the plan, piecing it together a little at a time, and Tom hates it. Everything is need-to-know, and she is very much figuring out what she needs to know without being told.
The Real Tom
She had spent their entire relationship reading books, buying lingerie, trying to figure out what was wrong between them — especially in the bedroom. Turns out it was Tom deliberately maintaining an average. Now that the real Tom is here, everything is different.
The thing is, the real Tom actually knows her. He remembered seeing a unicorn post of hers once, never said a word, but when he had someone pick up clothes for her, he passed along that detail. She got unicorn jammies. That one small thing does more for the relationship than anything he could have said out loud.
They sleep together and it is mind-blowing. She is both thrilled and absolutely furious about the time she lost.
Back to Business
The news comes on: one of the three bosses has died of a heart attack. His son Archie will take over. The team has zeroed in on Helene Saint Clair as the most accessible of the remaining bosses — they need to know what’s going on.
Tom is extremely protective of Betty, even around Bear who has already been cleared. He keeps her out of the mission planning entirely.
Then word comes in: Badger’s house blew up and a body was found inside. Hawk was caught in a liquor store shootout, half her face missing. Both confirmed dead.
Badger
Tom leaves to approach Helene at her hotel. Betty stays at the apartment. Unable to sit still, she starts scrolling Instagram looking for anything useful. She finds Bear on camera at the hotel. Then, in the background of another photo: Badger.
Badger, who is supposed to be dead.
She tries to reach Tom. He is not answering. She grabs flowers, shows up at the hotel as a delivery person with a whole story about a flower allergy and a mix-up, convinces a young guy named Corey to escort her up.
The elevator opens into the penthouse. Six people with guns trained on each other. Two already shot. Bear and Tom are there. So is Badger. She takes a second, drops the flowers, and shoots Badger in the chest.
Then everything erupts.
The Trap
Bear gets Helene out. Tom barely makes it into the elevator. Scorpion, who everyone believed was dead, is confirmed alive — the only survivor from this shootout.
Helene explains that Archie had approached both her and Charles, the third boss, about selling the black ops organization on the open market. Neither agreed. So he has been trying to eliminate them all.
Helene gets on the phone with Archie. She says that she and Charles will simply retire and leave him to handle everything. She knows he already has the paperwork drawn up so she will sign it. But she refuses to tell him where she is, and negotiates the terms: he brings three people, she will have two of hers, but Archie himself cannot come. She knows she has provoked his ego badly enough that he will absolutely have to show up in person to put a bullet in her himself. That is how they will get him.
Right before it starts, Betty wants to tell Tom she loves him — but Tom is wearing an earpiece. Everyone on the team can hear. They are all making jokes. She gets uncomfortable and puts it off.
The shootout begins and lasts for quite a while. There is an explosion near Betty and Tom finds her. He is bleeding too. She immediately blurts out that she loves him. She just could not hold it in anymore. Betty gets hit again — probably broken ribs this time, she thinks.
Then Helene finally has enough and tells him it’s time to talk. She explains that she didn’t realise until now that Charlie has played them both — making Archie think he would be the one to take over when it would actually be Charlie. Charlie set this whole thing up. He is the one who told Helene where to go off-grid. He got both her and Archie to pool all their people and resources into one place so they could destroy each other. And of course Charlie knew about the dynamite — she goes on to tell them the whole place has been rigged with dynamite for quite some time and shows the deadman switch.
One of Archie’s team says he is out. Did not sign up for a suicide mission. Four more follow. Tom, Fox, Bear, and Crow raise their guns on Archie, but Scorpion stays and pulls Archie down.
Helene is shot. Her deadman switch tumbles out of her hand. She winks at Betty. It was a bluff.
Betty gets low like Tom told her to and scooches around the island. She manages to shoot Archie twice. Scorpion sees her and is about to pull the trigger when Tom slides across the island and tackles her. They struggle but Scorpion escapes.
Tom puts a bullet in Archie’s brain and Betty passes out. She wakes in the hospital. Helene did not make it.
The Wedding
Jen shows up at the hospital and Betty tells her she cannot say much: the official story is that she was in a coma and admitted under the wrong name.
She still loves Tom. She still wants him to be her fiancé. He tells her from her hospital bed that he has decided to retire and has already chosen which safe house they will move into. They plan the wedding.
This is where you assume they get their happily ever after, right? Nope.
On the day, standing at the altar, Scorpion fires at Betty. Betty draws and fires back. She hits her. Scorpion is dead — but Tom has also been hit. Five hours later, the doctor comes out. Tom is dead.
After
Betty grieves. Bear and Crow keep showing up wanting to hang out and watch movies. They are one more reminder of Tom and she is not ready. Fox eventually shows up and just keeps ringing the doorbell. She tells Betty to get dressed and go get some sun.
Betty does. She starts cleaning the house. Putting her life back together, going on walks.
Then one day she and Jen are coming home with groceries. Someone comes after her through the garage, dressed in black — they shoot Jen and tie her up. She has no weapons: she had Henry clean out all of Tom’s stashes after Tom died.
The attacker starts interrogating her. A couple of questions in, Tom bursts in and shoots him.
Betty cannot stop staring.
The man Tom shot groans. Betty tells Tom not to hurt him — it’s Henry. Because Betty set the whole thing up. She is thrilled it worked. Tom is genuinely shocked that she faked it.
Betty had figured it out on her walks. Bear and Crow had been telling her to pay attention to her surroundings. She had noticed the same vehicles circling back, never staying long. She also thought it was strange that Bear would not let her touch Tom’s body when she saw him dead in the morgue. She did some research: there are drugs that can slow your heart rate and breathing enough to fake death. Risky, but possible. Tom’s last words at the wedding had been about feeling terrible for putting her in danger. And when she had Henry go through the weapon caches, she gave strict instructions not to disturb any surveillance equipment, especially anything recently installed.
Tom says he wants his weapons back. Henry laughs. Betty explains Henry did all of it in exchange for the weapons. He is not getting them back.
And then: Tom is mad at Betty. For forcing him out of hiding. After she thought she watched him die at their own wedding. He has the nerve to be mad.
Tom says he is working again, consulting only, and he is worried about putting her in danger.
Betty tells him he is missing the point. Do you love me? Yes. Great, then we are having a baby and we are staying together. What — a baby? Turns out she forgot her pill before the wedding. She is four months pregnant and she informs him she automatically wins every argument going forward. Forever. After everything he put her through.
Epilogue: baby born, Tom reinstated to official live status, moved to Boulder, Colorado, quietly married, changed their last name.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — There is real heat here, and the slow build makes it that much better. Tom spent their entire relationship deliberately keeping things mediocre to maintain his cover. Once the real Tom shows up? The payoff is very worth it.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
So satisfied. The epilogue delivers everything: baby born, Tom reinstated to official live status, relocated to Boulder, quietly married, new last name. Clean, happy, completely earned. This one sticks with you for a reason.
Would I Relisten to It?
Already have. Three times. It is on my permanent re-reads shelf and it is staying there. Go listen to it.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible
📱 Ebook
Amazon
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Plot Twisted | 🎧 | Standalone | Romantic Suspense | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
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