I LOVED being in their company

First I want to say that author J.A. Redmerski is a very good writer. Her style is thoroughly descriptive and imaginative without being to much and has a way of developing unusual characters to the point of them becoming real people within your mind. Redmerski's skill and authentic talent for story telling is reason enough to read/listen to any one of her books but
In The Company Killers series has become my favorite.

"Killing Sarai" is not for the faint of heart. It is not from the cookie cutter mold of familiar romances or action suspense....It is of its own mold all together
It is a literary sculpture sophisticatedly created to enthrall you, thrill you, break your heart, painfully put it back together, and completely change the way you think for a little while.The end result bringing you just enough satisfaction to have you ADDICTED!!
At least, for me, that is how I interpret this dark and disturbingly beautiful novel.

"Killing Sarai" is no story of redemption or absolution or good conquering all. This is a story of survival, retribution, vengeance, and being bound by deathly obligations. There are really no "good guys". This is about how sometimes only bad can defeat bad; on how you must have one wing in the fire in order to beat back demons. The romance built with in the walls of this alarming and bone-chilling world can hardly be referred to as "true love" or anything so conventional. The developing connection between these two conflicted-complicated-multifaceted characters is so strong and impacting it reaches beyond the simple guide lines of "falling in love" and touches more on a sense of belonging and ownership in equal measurements. The sense so heavily forceful and strange that they aren't able to really comprehend only left to follow carnal instinct that they can never be separated or go back to the way they were. Its so atypical that I am having a hard time explaining....but the notion grips me and I can't seem to let it go.

I don't want to really touch on the narration since the other reviewers give explanation enough. All I want to say is that while the pairing of voice and character might not seem perfectly matched, as this novel progresses it will hardly detract from the experience. "Killing Sarai" is COMPLETELY worth your credit/money. Download NOW!

17 people found this helpful

Disappointing

Believe I would have liked it a little more if there were different narrators. Kate Reinders sounded like a valley girl teenager at times instead of a 23 year old woman by her voice and by Redmerski's writing and Stephen Bel Davies had no intonation in his voice whatsoever. Hard to tell when he was speaking the words of Victor or Victor's thoughts. He had no depth as the voice of a trained assassin. He did much better faking an accent with Niklas. The sex scenes seemed crude rather than sexy. Doubt I'll read/listen to other books by Redmerski. Especially if they're read by the same narrators.

11 people found this helpful

AWESOME!

Dude! This was so good... Ok... so no this was not in the romance section...but who cares...it was still romance... but the true story lies with Sarai and Victor... OMG! So good.

So Sarai was kidnapped like years ago...when she was 14 I think...but she grew up the play thing of a drug cartel king pin... so when Victor comes strolling in, she knows he is her only way out.. So she eventually gets out, by hiding in Victor's car...but Victor is like the bad-to-the-bone assassin and so he knows she was back there...

Anyway...a lot of stuff happens, and Victor ends up keep Sarai with him... and which is not a good thing...because the company he works for...wants Sarai dead... So... what a roller-coaster this book was... I was on pins and needles throughout most of it...

The romance is a bit subtle in this one... but it is there... the angsty tension between Sarai and Victor...WOWZA!

Again with dual narration... Ok... I hate dual narration...hate it... but this one I tolerated because the book was just so darn good. I like the male and female narrators alone, and I wish if they were going to do the dual narration thing...they would do it simultaneously... but it wasn't... When your in Sarai's head...the female narrator reads, and when your in Victor's head the male narrator reads... it works, but it could have been a bit better...

All in all.. the book deserves a 5 for awesome of the storyline, a 4.5 for narration, and a 5 for overallness... The rest of the series is an Instant Download...

Great Buy, Credit or Sale!

11 people found this helpful

Excellent start to a great 5 novel series!

JA Redmerski is best known for her romance novels, but the In the Company of Killers is an outstanding psychological thriller series. I've written 5 star reviews for two later books in the series, but the series should be read in order. The series is profane, raunchy and even sadistic at times, but the stories are riveting. Killing Sarai is about teenager Sarai being escaping from bondage (she is being held and raped by a Mexican drug gang leader). Narration of the book is superb.

The first 4 books of the 5 book series are available in audiobook format from Audible. The 5th novel (The Black Wolf) is available in Kindle format. I'm still waiting for The Black Wolf to be released by Audible although I have read the Kindle version.

8 people found this helpful

Killing a credit

I love thrillers and so I ordered this "Drug Lord" story because the idea of a girl caught up in that world and trying to escape sounded like it would keep my interest. After about 2 hrs of listening to that annoying little girl voice and the monotone male voice going on and on with nothing new or different or even suspensful happening I quit! Don't waste your time on this one, its really poorly done.

8 people found this helpful

Good

The story was really good. I really like dual narration except I did not care for the male narration on this one. He sounded to old for the part. That took away from the story and how it was presented. The male part sounded like he was old enough to be her father not her lover.

8 people found this helpful

Not a winner

Would you try another book from J. A. Redmerski and/or Stephen Bel Davies and Kate Reinders ?

Yes. I read the Mayfair Moon books which is why I decided to give this one a try. This was soooo different. I guess Mayfair Moon is more of a YA series, where this is definitely adult.

What was most disappointing about J. A. Redmerski’s story?

I found a lot in the story disturbing. I know things like prostitution rings and drug lords and all of that exists and I hate to think of the awful things that happen to people who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I don't like to read about it. It was all just too specific and gruesome for me.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Oh my gosh. The man reading for Victor? Terrible! I can't believe how much I hated the way he read his part. For one thing, Victor is supposed to be youngish. I'm thinking late 20s, early 30s, something like that. The guy reading his part sounds way too old and I just didn't like him as a narrator anyway. The woman narrating was fine. She's the same one that did the other books by JA Redmerski and while I didn't think she was amazing, she wasn't bad.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Killing Sarai?

The very graphic sex scenes. I can handle the violence as lot better than the sex. Ugh!

Any additional comments?

I was just overall disappointed in this one. I'll be skipping the sequel.

7 people found this helpful

Go immediately to book 2!

I enjoyed this listen, a different take on a thriller/romance. There were complaints that the male narrator sounded too old but I thought the female narrator sounded too young; however, they both grow on you. This is a series and I am looking forward to #2 and #3 as there were a lot of open ended questions that were left unanswered.

6 people found this helpful

Bad romance pretending to be suspense

The first 1/2 is much better than the second half of the book. It started as an assassin/action story and ended up as a weak "romance" novel. From just after the midway point onward, the book is entirely about her drooling over him and him drooling over her but both being so "strong" that instead of getting together they just wring their hands and cry out to the skies in great angst and pain...

oh wait, that might be exaggerating... they just talk (in their own heads) about why they can't be together. We don't believe it, they don't believe it, and we all know where it goes from there... (best sex EV-A). (Actually, the sex, when it comes, is not very satisfying - it's short and unsubtle and the angst has already been dispelled by the time it occurs).

The concept of the novel is great. I love assassin books, especially the dark and troubled ones. Unfortunately, there is no dark and no trouble here, just lots of "ring around the romance"...

I'm not going to read more in the series; I'll stick to real assassins (such as John Rain or Keller, heck, even Estep's assassin is better than this guy, and that's a pretty low bar), not bad romance novels masquerading as assassin-action. Oh, and it probably didn't help that the author "defined" rape and women's responses to it on a couple occasions - it came across as if the author didn't really know what her own feelings on the subject were: at one moment allowing an adult male to "seduce" a 14 year old is rape, the next moment it wasn't really since the girl went along with it.

Bah. The more I think about it, the less I like it. At least with the rapes in the zombie novels I usually read, the author is clear on the subject.

The narration is just shy of being annoying. The female voice is on the edge of whiny and the male voice is a bit too... I dunno... "silky"... like he's trying to sell us a car. There is some foul language (not excessive), and some sexual descriptions that are a bit on the detailed side. There is nothing gory.

5 people found this helpful

LOVED the storyline!!

What did you like best about this story?

I loved the story and the relationship Sarai and Victor. I liked how Victor was not on board with getting too close with Sarai at the beginning. I liked that it took him most of the book and was not an instant connection for him and it was for her. It was great to see her have to "fight" for him in a sense.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

No....I loved the lady who read for Sarai. She was great! The guy who read for Victor....not so much. I pictured a very good looking man in mid-30's but when I heard the voice of the reader it sounded like someone in his mid-60's....He did not match what the story had portrayed Victor to be.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes! Cannot wait to read the next one

4 people found this helpful