Exploited

A Zero Day Romance – Book One

By A. Meredith Walters

Buy: Amazon

Synopsis

In this pulse-pounding novel from the bestselling author of Butterfly Dreams, a vigilante hacker plays a seductive game with the agent who’s chasing her online—and sharing her bed in real life.

At first glance, I’m nothing out of the ordinary. I am a daughter. A sister. A friend. When you look at me you won’t see anything that warrants suspicion. I don’t look like a criminal.

My name is Hannah Whalen, but most people know me as freed0mov3rdr1v3, or “Freedom Overdrive”—one of the world’s most prolific and notorious hacktivists. My goal—my purpose—is to shed light on the evil that lurks behind the corporate and government lies we have been force-fed for too long.

My story begins with the best possible intention. Devoting my life to exposing the corrupt. The dishonest. The unethical. For that, they label me a cyber-terrorist. Wanted by the FBI, I’ve always been one step ahead.

Until I fell in love.

Because I’m sleeping with the man who’s hunting me. And he has no idea that I am his prey. Now I have to decide what’s more important: my freedom or my heart.

Note: Exploited ends on a cliffhanger. Hannah’s story continues in Aftermath.

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Michel’s Review

Exploited by A. Meredith Walters is the debut book  in the new Zero Day series.  This new series has a fresh storyline which focuses on cyber crimes and the elite underworld of hackers.  With the stroke of a key a person’s life can be ruined.  Corporations can be bankrupted.  Powerful secrets can be revealed.  The almighty hacker has the power to destroy the world without a warning.

Freedom Overdrive… aka freed0mov3rdr1v3… has gained notoriety in the cyber world as the hacktivist exposing powerful corporations known for their corrupt misdeeds and control over the ordinary peoples lives.  This cyber vigilante’s actions are untraceable and has eluded the FBI for years.  Freedom Overdrive’s activities have waned in the past two years but suddenly resurfaced in a big way and once again gaining attention in the cyber world as well as the FBI.

Hannah Whelan is Freedom Overdrive.  She’s on a mission to destroy those who have destroyed ordinary people and ordinary families.  Her motivations are pure.  She covers her tracks and is untraceable.  On the surface she’s appears to be an ordinary person that no one really notices.  She lives her life quietly, doesn’t socialize, doesn’t have friends or family relationships, and never allows anyone to become close with her.  Her focus is revenge for her family. Her secret world behind the keyboard is expertly hidden and off the radar.   When she steps outside her perfectly structured domain and teams up with another hacktivist, TOx1cwrath, it becomes  the biggest mistake of life.  Her perfectly structured world spirals out of control.

Hannah targeted FBI agent Mason Kohler to stay one step ahead of the FBI.  What she didn’t count on was falling in love with Mason.  She also underestimated his brilliance and dedication to his job. She also underestimated her shadow partner TOx1cwrath.

Between her relationship with Mason and her partnership with TOx1cwrath, her life is spiraling out of control.  Her lies are catching up to her.  Her over inflated ego is blinding her.  Her new shadow partner has outsmarted her and is destroying her with her own weapon of choice, the keyboard.  One stroke and Hannah is exposed.  Mason knows who she is.  Her shadow partner, TOx1cwrath, has set her up.  Who is TOx1cwrath?  Can she outsmart him and take him down before it’s too late.  Can she let go of her love for Mason to save her skin or will she be ruined by her own inflated ego?

I found this book very intriguing.  It had a different plot line that kept me turning the pages. A. Meredith Rogers did an excellent job portraying the cyber world without making it too overly complex for readers to follow.  There were a few blips in the overall plot that left me scratching my head wondering what I missed because there wasn’t enough explanations. One was why she targeted Mason in the first place because at that point her endeavors were untraceable.  The other thing that threw me off track was the build up of some of the potential characters who could possibly be TOx1cwrath.  There just wasn’t enough background to understand the hostility or motivations.  While Hannah was a different kind of book character I will say that she really wasn’t a nice person.  She treated people with indifference or hostility.  I had a hard time seeing the connection between her and Mason.  The one thing that kept me intrigued and turning the pages was all the possibilities that haven’t been revealed at this point.  My faith in A. Meredith Walter’s writing ability kept me invested in the story because she is known for creating complex characters and unpredictable plots.  I want to see what comes next because I feel this book is only scratching the surface.

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Zero Day Series

Coming January 16, 2018

Aftermath – Book Two

Pre Order: Amazon

Synopsis

Can a thrilling love affair survive a scorched-earth cyber-war? The chase is online in the explosive conclusion to the Zero Day series from New York Times bestselling author A. Meredith Walters. 

Spoiler alert! The following reveals crucial plot points from Exploited.

I thought I had been so careful. I had planned, plotted, played the role, always staying hidden from the man who was hunting me. But now Mason Kohler knows who I really am. The cat has found the mouse—the agent has found the hacker.

And the worst part is, he thinks our love story is a lie.

I fell for him from the beginning. That was always real. But it doesn’t matter now. Mason’s waging a war against his heart, and he’s determined to bring me down at all costs. So now I live in fear, all because I was betrayed by someone I foolishly chose to trust.

See, all that time I thought I was exposing corruption, I was unknowingly conspiring with the worst kind of evil. Now, to prove myself to Mason and save what we have, I have one last hope. One obsession. I must learn the identity of my true enemy—the anonymous individual known as Toxicwrath—before it’s too late.

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The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Contemporary and Paranormal romance including The Find You in the Dark and Bad Rep series as well as the upcoming stand alone romance, Reclaiming the Sand, and a dark new adult series for Gallery Books.

A. Meredith spent ten years as a counselor for at risk teens and children. First working at a Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault program and then later a program for children with severe emotional and mental health issues. Her former clients and their stories continue to influence every aspect of her writing.

When not writing (or being tortured with all manner of beauty products at the hand of her very imaginative and extremely girly daughter), she is eating chocolate, watching reality television that could rot your brain and reading a smutty novel or two.

A. Meredith is represented by Michelle Johnson with the Inklings Literary Agency.

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