Her Name Is Knight, Book 1 of Nena Knight Series by Yasmin Angoe
A Review By: SY
A smash debut novel from rising star Yasmin Angoe, Her Name Is Knight features an elite assassin heroine on a mission to topple a human trafficking ring and avenge her family.
Stolen from her Ghanaian village as a child, Nena Knight has plenty of motives to kill. Now an elite assassin for a powerful business syndicate called the Tribe, she gets plenty of chances.
But while on assignment in Miami, Nena ends up saving a life, not taking one. She emerges from the experience a changed woman, finally hopeful for a life beyond rage and revenge. Tasked with killing a man she’s come to respect, Nena struggles to reconcile her loyalty to the Tribe with her new purpose.
Meanwhile, she learns a new Tribe council member is the same man who razed her village, murdered her family, and sold her into captivity. Nena can’t resist the temptation of vengeance - and she doesn’t want to. Before she can reclaim her life, she must leverage everything she was and everything she is to take him down and end the cycle of bloodshed for good.
Review Notes:
Audio Book Publication Year: 2021
An installment in a Series? Yes
Narrator (s): Tamika Katon-Donegal
Of all the things that she has overcome, will love be the thing that breaks her?
Ms. Angoe opens the book by explicitly detailing potential triggers and support resources for readers that may experience those triggers. The warnings should be carefully considered by listeners prone to those sensitivities, and it was refreshing that they were included in the audio version, as they often are excluded from the opening credits.
In this debut novel, the author does a great job of telling the past and present in a parallel format, made even better by the narrator's strong performances of American and African-based accents to distinguish between time and space. Character trajectories and plotlines appear to be unrelated in the beginning, and Ms. Angoe reveals their connections in dramatic, and sometimes, violent fashion. The main character, Nena, is fascinating - going from being devoid of emotion as the result of heart-wrenching childhood circumstances - to wrestling with feelings of love and affection for a potential mark. While the main character's history and profession are at the center of the story, there is plenty of commentary about how political power and money can corrupt, who has the right to seek vengeance, and the true meaning of justice, family, and love. The dialogue and action in this novel were attention-grabbing and made it an enjoyable listen.
Katon-Donegal is a talented voice actress and provides great narration for this thriller. The listener's heart can race and ache alongside Nena's, and it will be interesting to see how this story continues in the second installment.
The story did seem to run a little long in a few places and possibly could have been shortened overall, either in descriptors or dialogue. However, those plot pieces may provide important context for book 2 of the series.
Reading Recommendation? Yes!
Rating: 5 (I need another one!)
Content Warnings? Yes; Human or animal loss, Physical abuse/violence, Sexual abuse/violence.
