Nina is an information broker with a mission—she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America.

Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive.

They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…

Or they could do the impossible: team up.

So, here’s a thing that I probably don’t mention much with a lot of specificity: I really enjoy romance in the books that I read.

Like…a lot.

Yeah, I mean…sometimes it’s my favorite aspect of a story I read, real talk. That said, I don’t know that I’ve read anything that would strictly fall under the Romance genre. But I really love watching the folks who are active in that community do their thing on Twitter…it just seems like an awesome & really passionate fan base!

Kit Rocha (a pseudonym for Bree Bridges & Donna Herren) describes their books as post-apocalyptic kissing books, and that’s certainly what you can expect out of DEAL WITH THE DEVIL, the first book in the new Mercenary Librarians series. I’m just now figuring out that this series is set in the same world as Rocha’s Beyond series, but I went into this with no knowledge of that world & had no trouble.

The story is set in Atlanta, after a cataclysmic environmental event known as the Flares has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure & communications satellites. People survive, but everything is changed.

The story centers around two different groups coming together for a rescue mission.

Nina leads the mercenary librarians, a group of information brokers. They have the ability to print books for people in their community, on a small scale. Nina is the sort’ve hopelessly optimistic survivor of the group, having lost her sisters to the likely-evil corporation responsible for her (and her friends) genetic modification. On top of being big-hearted and caring, Nina is also blindingly fast in a fight, and hella strong. In addition to Nina, there’s Maya, who remembers literally everything she hears, and Dani, who cannot feel pain.

They make a hell of a crew.

They get propositioned by Knox, the leader of a rogue crew of super soldiers known as the Silver Devils. They’ve got a lead on a cache of digital information that will mean the world to Nina and her crew, so the two groups unite to take a road trip.

Action, adventure, double-crosses, and sexy times ensue.

I really enjoyed this book a ton, but I want to get my main criticism out of the way here: there’s not a whole lot of librarian…ing? Like, the fact that Nina & her crew are supposedly dedicated to discovering & salvaging priceless information falls so far into the background that you kinda forget that’s what they’re out to do. It didn’t really impact my overall enjoyment of this book, but it maybe feels a little odd in hindsight.

All that said, DEAL WITH THE DEVIL is a fucking blast & a book that is difficult to put down. I’m a huge sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff, and this is a really cool take on the genre. It’s very character driven, but also the action sequences are bone-crunching, dazzling affairs. Oof.

And then there’s the romance. I’m not sure I 100% bought into the emotional connection between Nina & Knox, but my goodness…the sexual tension between these two characters is INTENSE and I can see why Kit Rocha has been successful selling romance books!

*insert GIF of Blanche spraying herself with water*

I dug the hell out of this one! It was fast-paced, funny, and kinda ridiculously sexy. I really hope the next book gets into quite a bit more about the mercenary librarians actually being mercenary librarians, but I will happily devour the rest of this series!