Title: Thunder Game
Author: Christine Feehan
Series: GhostWalker #20
Pages: 375
Diego Campo has returned to his home in the Appalachian Mountains to die. He has it all planned out and knows his brother will find him soon. What he doesn’t expect is to find his mountain covered in soldiers who are after two women on his neighbors farm. While attempting to rescue the women, Diego finds himself enraptured by Leila, who provides him with a new reason to live.
Diego is the brother of Rubin from Lightning Game, and is known as the more reserved brother who always puts himself first. As we quickly learn, Diego really struggles with his mental health and has a lot of childhood trauma making him believe his abilities are evil, even though he has the same abilities as Rubin. Diego starts this book planning to die but meeting Leila changes his perspective on everything. He realizes how depressed he is and eventually how much damage his mother’s abuse did to him. I liked that we get to see the growth of his character and his determination to seek help for his problems.
Leila has been trained as an assassin since she was ten years old. She and her sister were taken by the government when their parents died and her sister Bridget was given to Whitney. Leila was a badass who didn’t need anyone to protect her. She is severely injured and still goes on a killing spree. I really liked her a lot and kind of wish we had seen her in action more.
Leila and Diego had a very sweet and fast paced relationship. Diego falls instantly for her and basically worships the ground she walks on. He has no problem doing whatever it takes to make her happy, whether it’s rescuing her sister or daughter. I liked their relationship, especially since dealing with Diego’s trauma was discussed. What I didn’t like though was that Leila’s trauma was never addressed. She was raped and yet at no point is it ever brought up during their relationship, not even before they have sex. It was disappointing to see so much time put on Diego’s trauma but none on Leila’s. My other issue with the relationship between these two was the dialogue. Sometimes it was so repetitive and drawn out that it got a bit boring.
In this book we finally get to see Whitney come back into play. After so many books with no progression made at all in stopping him, he finally appears again. The Ghostwalker’s finally push back against the military commanders and Whitney in this one by striking at one of his labs and destroying it. I am very glad that we finally see some movement against him because that has been one of my main complaints in the previous books. Hopefully, we will continue to see more of this in the future books.
Overall, this was another enjoyable Ghostwalker book. I am curious to see who the next book will be about and if we will finally see more being done to stop Whitney.
TW: Diego is suicidal in the beginning of the book and has made plans to kill himself; death of parents recounted (one by suicide); death of siblings recounted; parent with mental illness discussed; child physical and emotional abuse discussed; death; gun violence and wounds; attempted rape (on page) and past rape mentioned;
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Previous books and reviews for the series:
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