Red-Haired Ash Reads

We finally get Marcus’ story! Marcus is Jax’s brother who was rescued from one of the Bunkers. He was tortured and lost his memory and is now struggling to control himself, especially his extreme protectiveness towards Dr. Penelope Kim. 

This was a very emotional story. Marcus has been tortured and has no memories of what was done to him in the labs. He is also struggling to reconnect to his emotions and getting to know his brother. So as you can imagine, things are rough for him. There are a lot of outbursts and extremely aggressive and protective behavior from him. We also find that he has triggers embedded in him that cause various problems for Vanguard. From the very beginning I was hooked on Marcus’ story and I loved seeing him slowly come out of his protective shell and fall in love. 

Penny was a great heroine. She was smart, compassionate, and also pretty deadly when she needed to be. She never gives up on Marcus and is constantly reminding him that he is human and worth love. Marcus and Penny have great romance and a lot of chemistry. I enjoyed watching them fall in love and open up with each other. 

This is the last book in this series and I think Zanetti did a great job at wrapping up all the loose threads. This pandemic was destructive but because of Vanguard’s determination to continue research the humans are able to survive. Overall, this was a very good ending for this series, I just wish we had more stories featuring the members of the Brigade since they seemed important but we never really got to know their full story. 

Trigger Warnings: torture mentioned; human experimentation; memory loss; loss of family discussed; attempted rape; on page deaths; pregnancy complications;  

---

Goodreads | Amazon

---

Previous books and reviews for the series:

#0.5 Scorpius Rising
#1 Mercury Striking
#2 Shadow Falling
#3 Justice Ascending
#4 Storm Gathering
#4.5 Blaze Erupting
#5 Winter Igniting