Review: Trustworthy by Astrid Amara

Title: Trustworthy

Series: Trust: Book Two

Author: Astrid Amara

Length: 94 Pages

Category: SciFi, Cyberpunk

At a Glance: Filled with action, danger, and plenty of suspense along with solid world building for such a short novel, Astrid Amara also crafts a lovely romance that engaged both my feelings and my imagination.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Ten years ago, lovers and best friends Ivo Toreli and Robert Mackenzie were separated by death.

But sometimes life gives you second chances. Life… and a lot of cybernetic enhancements.

Trust Agent 505 may not remember who he was before he worked security for Trust Insurance, but now his prisoner thinks he knows him. This revolutionary named “Mack,” who has stolen one of Trust’s prized possessions, seems to think Agent 505 is named “Ivo,” someone from his past. Someone he once loved more than anyone on any of the inhabited worlds.

Ivo doesn’t remember any of it, of course. But if he’s going to get Trust’s property back from the revolutionaries, he’s going to have to play along.

And if playing along also means sleeping with a handsome, humorous, and slightly dangerous ex-soldier, all the better, right?

Review: In a faraway time, on a distant planet far from Earth, Astrid Amara sets up a tale of romantic suspense and cyberpunk assassins, espionage and betrayal, death and resurrection, and it all adds up to a fantastically entertaining story, the second in the Trust series.

Trustworthy read a bit like some Steve and Bucky fic to me. Whether that was Amara’s intention or not, I have no idea, but who cares? I didn’t mind it a bit. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that idea amped up my love of the story by several degrees. The Prologue opens a full decade prior to the meat of the story, but the impact of the introduction was imperative to inspire the appropriate emotional tone. It is beyond obvious that Robert “Mack” Mackenzie and Ivo Toreli are deeply, passionately in love when the story begins. There is no question that they mean to be together and love each other for as long as they both shall live. Their connection is a combination of chemistry and history, and combined, their commitment to each other bleeds from every paragraph.

But then, an unexpected mission goes terribly wrong and ends it all. ‘Til death do you part becomes a painful reality, and it was impossible not to feel the impact of it after Amara had built such a solid connection between Mack and Ivo, and did it with no little precision.

Their reunion ushers in a heavy dose of dramatic conflict when Mack realizes the man trying to kill him is the man he’d buried a decade before—perhaps not the same man in every way, but his Ivo nevertheless. Ivo’s enhanced cybernetics comes along with a case of drug dependency and coercive amnesia which exposes how effectively Mack has lost the love of his life even as he sees Ivo standing before him. That they are in pursuit of an item of no small consequence on behalf of opposing factions sets up their forced proximity and subsequent isolation, Ivo’s grudging dependence on Mack as he goes through withdrawals, some unexpected revelations—which is never not great—and Mack’s determination not to lose Ivo a second time. The only urge Ivo feels, however, is to complete his mission, and if that means sleeping with Mack, betraying him, and/or killing him in the process, so be it.

Trustworthy culminates with all the danger and drama promised along the way, and I loved the way Amara resolved things with Ivo and Mack even if I felt some things were settled a bit too hastily for Ivo. Dragging it out, though, would have only added word count rather than filling in blanks readers can’t fill in themselves, so I was able to go with the flow and simply relish the fact that they’d been given a second chance at a happy ending.

Characters from book one in the series, Policy of Lies, make an important cameo appearance in Trustworthy, but this book is an absolute standalone. Filled with action, danger, and plenty of suspense along with solid world building for such a short novel, Astrid Amara also crafts a lovely romance that engaged both my feelings and my imagination.

You can buy Trustworthy here:
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