Charlie Hart is living the dream. Her divorce has been finalized and she has been awarded a generous settlement from her cheating bastard of an ex-husband. She is ready to move on with her life, and that means moving out of her parents' home and leaving Dad, Mum, and her blue-haired, pot-smoking Grandma Blue behind, along with the geriatric club of punk rockers Grandma Blue calls her friends.
Grandma Blue may be embarrassing at times, but she is right about Brody McCaine, the one that Charlie let get away through her fear of being hurt again. Charlie wants to see him again, but she's got to move into her new house in London first and figure out what she is going to do with her life.
Before she has even turned the key to her new home, Brody's boss, Kurt calls. A CPA (close protection agent), she is not. And yet, a case has come up-one involving a sadistic sociopath, and the client has asked for Charlie specifically, offering to pay whatever it takes to have her become an agent.
Can she make it through basic training, and, more importantly, will she be able to uncover the identity of a murderer while circumnavigating her way through the highest levels of society? Who is this person who is threatening the Goldbloom family and who is so detached from human emotion he can sing the lyrics but can't respond to the melody of normal human emotions - a psychopathic killer.
The third in the Charlie Hart Crime Series and by far my favourite. Mania is a little darker than the previous Charlie Hart books, exploring the minds of creatures of our worst nightmares that are capable of the most horrendous acts without a second thought. Teddie Dahlin has a special knack of combining Thriller and New Adult in a way that is enjoyable to fans of both genres, while indulging in our love of glitz, glamour, and privilege.
The characters are believable, even as one (dare I say it) unbelievable event after another takes place-though Grandma Blue bears the lion's share of responsibility for those laugh-out-loud moments. But it is the believability of the people in the book, both the sympathetic and non-sympathetic characters, that brings the story to life. Whether dealing with Blue and her antics or a psychotic killer-the reader feels like this story could actually happen. With Mania, Teddie has taken (or rather: very nicely shoved) Charlie into yet another escapade, one that requires her active involvement in helping a prominent family being tormented by a sadist sociopath and which places her in extreme danger. Charlie and Blue are swept up in events beyond what they've experienced and yet never lose their identity or their joie de vivre-what makes them who they are. Luckily, Brody, Glen, and the rest of the CPA team are on hand. You will laugh, you will shudder, you will glower at certain men, but you won't lose interest at any point from the first page to the last, and that is the mark of a master storyteller.