ebooks are my thang

I love Gin Blanco. I say this every single book, and I mean it. She is exactly who I would want to have as my friend in real life. Sure, she is an assassin, but her loyalty and compassion for those who are lucky to have her love is unmatched. With this sixth book in Jennifer Estep's Elemental Assassin series, By A Thread is definitely no exception to the rule, each book just gets better and better in this series. I loved this book!

By A Thread is a wild ride. Gin is finally convinced that she needs a vacation, something she has never had before. She and her sister Bria head out a day early together to Blue Marsh, and from the start, things are a little tense between them. Bria is being really annoying with the constant talk of her best friend, Callie, and is making Gin feel somewhat alienated. Having once lived in Blue Marsh, Gin is faced with the insecurities of there being someone else in Bria's life whom she has loved like a sister. And it sucks. Finn and Owen are going to leave later and meet them there, giving them some girl time together. But of course, trouble follows Gin like a bee to honey. As they are visiting Callie's restaurant, The Sea Breeze, it becomes clear that Callie is being bullied and threatened to sell her restaurant so the local wealthy vampire tycoon, Dekes, can build his casino on it. When the threats go too far, there is no way that Gin can walk away. And that is what I love most about her.

Blue Marsh might be hundreds of miles away from Ashland, but sociopathic assholes were the same no matter where you went.

Gin really really shines in this book. She is guilty of a little bit of arrogance at first, and is smacked down... hard. In the process, she has a series of dreams that are flashbacks to a vital lesson her deceased mentor and surrogate father Fletcher Lane taught her on self-reliance. She also rises to every single occasion, when it becomes clear there are victims in a dire situation that need to be helped. Once she knows just how bad Dekes is, and how truly awful his crimes are, and how dire the situation is for his victims, she cannot walk away.

Hope. It was the one thing that kept suckering me in time after time, the one thing that always seemed to make everything I went through worthwhile in the end.

In By A Thread, the event we all knew would happen again one day... Detective Dooshbagalo, I mean Donovan, makes his rude and arrogant return. He continues to look down on Gin and demean her in any way possible, and it is infuriating. But in the end, Gin has the last word, sees right through him, makes her choice, Owen; she is the one walking away from the Detective this time. It was glorious. And of course, I can't forget Gin's step-brother Finn as the much needed comedic relief. From his despair over his severely battered Astin Martin, to inserting his "awkward" in a singsongy voice to uncomfortable situations, he is a breathe of fresh air to another very intense installment. And despite all the tension at the beginning, Gin and Bria are able to clear the air, and finally have the talk they so needed to have since before Mab was murdered. Bria really sticks up for Gin, and has her back. It might have made me a little weepy.

"No," Bria snarled. "My sister's better than I am because she doesn't pretend to be anything other than what she is, and she always does exactly what she says she will. She's better than you are too (DONOVAN), even if you're too much of a dumbass to realize it."

I truly enjoyed this book, and it is one of my favorites in the series. The change of scenery, the new villain Dekes, and the battling of old demons involving Detective Donovan made it very addictive. I could not put By A Thread down, and the pacing was fantastic, with all the kickass assassin violence that you'd come to expect with an Elemental Assassin novel. There was a lot of action and it's not weighted down with a lot of recap which can be common this far in to a series. It left me begging for more!