The Hit by Allen Zadoff Review

The Hit by Allen Zadoff 

“Chance can be your friend or your enemy”

The Hit is the story of Ben a trained hit man/soldier who is tasked to take down the Mayor of New York. Ben is enrolled in The Program, an organisation which assigns missions to Ben, he gains access to the target by becoming friends with the children of the victims and after he kills them he leaves.

What I liked;

The Introduction – probably the best part of the novel as it shows Ben completing a mission. We see what he does and how he does it and the fast paced writing style sets the book up to be interesting.

The main character – Ben is a very mysterious and closed off character which fits into his job description.  He was very collected and calm in the action scenes and it’s almost funny how he deals with getting close with the Mayor’s daughter (Sam) because he’s so used to finding his job easy when he meets Sam it’s much harder and he tries really hard. His personality reminds me of secret agents in films - silent/brooding however he’s not a jerk.

The Plot – The entire mystery was built up well with the spying, kicking ass and getting to know different characters. I enjoyed the subplot of Ben trying to figure out if the Program was “good” and his back story on how he joined the Program. I also liked the twist near the end and how the blog was used to communicate between two people. The pace of the story was good with most of it being very fast as the story only took place in a couple of days.

What I didn’t like;

Sam – She was really annoying and I don’t know what about her specifically but she came across as up herself and because she had a certain political view she was higher up than others. Also her relationship with her ex boyfriend was surrounded by mystery and so when the twist happened it just fell flat because I didn’t really  believe in their relationship

Romance – Adding to the previous point I didn’t like Sam – their relationship was way too quick and they developed feelings too easily.

Writing Style – Something was off with the writing style. Even though I know that Ben is supposed to be an enclosed character the writing style at times felt really bland and emotionless which made it really hard to connect with the characters and plot. The book ended quite well – what happened was unexpected and it wrapped up well for a first book. It didn’t create any real excitement for the rest of the series though.

★★★☆☆