HAYLEY CHILL

Hayley Chill is an intern with the White House Chief of Staff.

Her lot in life will change quite a bit soon after but that is what she is doing when the main action of the series gets going.

In a bit of a flashback, really, we start out following her as a soldier in the U.S. Army, an infantryman stationed in the southern part of the country where she continued her love of boxing by eventually becoming the ARSOUTH champion in her weight class. We learn that this 24-year-old woman, who stands just under 5'8" weighing 125 lbs. and is described as "lean and exquisitely muscled", got her tenacity at fighting from being the eldest of 6 children raised by "a single mom laid low multiple cancers". Being the oldest, she knew it was her role to defend "herself and her five siblings with savage determination".

Chill needed a way to make money to send back home as well as a way to get out of the poverty that gripped her and her family in West Virginia and the army was that path but it was only a step and after the brief but very interesting recount of an event in that military life, the story moves her to her internship with the CoS and the events that will change her life as well as that of the country.

One thing more that helps Chill tremendously in addition to her ability to handle herself physically and mentally in some pretty scaring and dangerous situations is the Chill has an eidetic memory, not just what she reads but also what she hears and sees.

Chill will start her second career, after the stint in the military, at the White House in the very lowly position of intern but she will not stay there long and she will get involved in some pretty amazing, exciting, and extremely dangerous events which will task her skills to their max.

I was hooked on this series from the beginning and that was despite it using the present tense style, something I really dislike a lot. Strangely, though, the way the author handled it was quite well done and surprisingly I found myself ignoring it, so well done to the author.

There is also a very strange thing the series does with minor characters, and a couple not so minor, after their parts in the program have ended. Most books have these people who enter the stage, do their thing, and then exit, never to be seen again. In this series, though, the author will often give a paragraph or two about what the future will hold for that person; for example, telling how "Person A will quit her job and take a much better one at Company XYZ, rising to the rank of executive vice president of Sales and earning a 7-figure salary up to the time she is caught embezzling and spending the last ten years of her life in prison".

The first couple times these side-bars happens, I was a quizzical. After a while, though, I really got to enjoy the heck out of these digressions and actually looked forward to them.

But the thing I liked the most about this strange but compelling series was the twist that I never saw coming. Each book had at least one. I will say nothing more about any of them except to admit I was 'gob-smacked' each time even though they all made terrific sense. Major kudos to Chris Hauty!