BookView Review

Set in Florida between two deadly hurricanes, Johni’s second book in the Nick Justin Chronicles follows a family caught between collapsing systems and rising violence. Nick and Andrea Justin believed it was over. The network they exposed was broken. Their enemies were jailed. Their daughter was safe. But between Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a covert operation freed the killers they helped bring down. With law enforcement compromised, the Justins disappeared off-grid. To protect their child, they became what they once hunted. 

The novel continues the fallout from the events of the first book, showing how power rarely collapses—it reorganizes. Nick’s role shifts from hunter to hunted, a man whose survival threatens structures meant to forget. His choices revolve around his family, most of all his daughter, yet Johni keeps emotion restrained. Andrea is never reduced to a narrative casualty. Her physical limitations influence strategy rather than restrict it, and her background in law and testimony makes her a partner in decision-making, not a witness to it.

Johni shows corruption as process rather than spectacle: orders are signed because they are routine, transfers happen because paperwork allows them, and people die because no single hand can be blamed. Evil here is administrative, not dramatic. Even the mercenaries feel less like villains than technicians—efficient, calm, and detached. Lovers of hard-edged political thrillers will find it hard to put down.

***