Catch and Release

By: J.T. Twerell
Publisher: Living Word Publications
Publication Date: November 2011
ISBN: 978-0-6155-5685-7
Reviewed by: Amy Lignor 
Review Date: December 10, 2011

Jennifer Blade lost her father when she was young, a wonderful Irish cop who truly loved his family. What she received right after that was a mother who had no idea how to go on, besides hooking up with some pretty lousy men, one of whom ended her life. It is now twenty years later and Jennifer is all grown up. She goes by the name of J. and has set her sights on taking ‘revenge’ for her father’s death and her own life,a life that didn't turn out the way she had dreamed it would.

Dr. Steve Sanders is a psychologist who spends his time listening to many tales of woe, and trying his best to help his patients understand their feelings in order to find their happiness, although every once in a while he finds himself in a conversation with someone who needs to be a victim. However, this day he doesn’t let it get him down, because Dr. Steve is now on vacation and headed up to his favorite spot to camp, hike and do his favorite thing - fish.

What Dr. Steve certainly doesn’t expect up at the campsite is having a young woman located quite close to him who is having her own fishing and camping event. Meeting up with each other and truly enjoying an evening together, Dr. Steve again gets something he doesn’t expect - a moment where he is faced with a slime trying to kill J., and having to save her life. In an instant, Dr. Steve has met an interesting woman, saved her life and killed another person.

Soon Dr. Steve finds out that J. is an undercover agent who has been working on the ‘inside’ to take a Colombian drug lord down. And now, much to his dismay, this calm doctor is involved in a manhunt of mammoth proportions. He ends his fishing trip and follows J.’s letters and directions on how to get out of town, where to go, where to meet up with her and what to do.

The oddities continue as Dr. Steve finds that this woman he is attracted to, whose life he saved, may not be the ‘good’ agent she claimed to be. Especially when he opens his door to find other agents outside telling him that J. is actually a bad seed who stole millions of dollars and they are trying to track her down.

Readers’ hearts will be beating hard as they join in this adventure where people come back from the dead, wear so many facades you’re not quite sure who’s on the good or bad side of the law, while experiencing the growing attraction between the lady ‘cop’ who could be lying through her teeth and the normally bored psychologist who stepped into the adventure of a lifetime.

The author, a practicing psychotherapist, certainly knows how to light a fire at the beginning of a tale and guide the reader through all types of personalities and red herrings that will make them very disappointed when the story has to come to an end.

Quill Says: This is one psychologist who has met his match when it comes to a truly astonishing female!

For more information on Catch and Release, please visit the author's website at: www.jttwerell.com

Article first published as Book Review: Catch and Release by J. T. Twerell on Blogcritics.