Tillman Gilson: The Very Secret Weapon

Tillman Gilson's debut novel introduces a female type James Bond, who is willing to do anything in order to get the job done to save her country and those that she loves.

Alex is known as a socialite around the world, though her home base is in D.C. but it is her position as a socialite that the American government has benifitted greatly. Alex has been working as a spy/agent of the government since the end of WWII. She has cultivated sources and people around the world and to this day they still feed her information. While attending one of the many yearly events around the world, she meets a British Man named Simon, who runs his own mercenary type business and Alex is instantly attracted to him. However, there is other business that needs to be done and spying business is never safe for you or the ones that you love. 

When the book first started out, I was very interested to see what kind of spy book it was going to be as I had saw other reviews relate it and Alex to a woman version of James Bond.  The book starts out, with Alex in Russia meeting with a source in order to obtain information about a Russian mobster and using unconventional ways to achieve this. However, as I continued reading this book I was a little bit confused about what the overall premise or purpose of the book was. I thought it was going to be more of a spy thriller but that was definitely the secondary plot within the book. The number one plot in this book is about Simon and Alex and their relationship and romance. When it came to the mystery/thriller/spying aspect it was more ho-hum, fairly straight forward and at times extremely predictable.

I appreciated that while the overall theme of the book is about a Simon and Alex’s romance and relationship Gilson kept that sex scenes (and there could have been multiple of them in this novel) short and really did not do into that much detail (which is high points for me). However, the farther I got into the novel, there were more and more sex scenes that I felt like the rest of the plot and premise were almost nonexistent, with only a paragraph of chapter here and there that was about Alex’s secret spy life. I also felt that because so much of the time is spent with Alex and Simon exploring their relationship and each others bodies there was a lack of character development. The book seemed to span what they were going to do together, which restaurant they wanted to eat at or where they wanted to shop, as very surface level information about the person. I did enjoy learning the snippet of Alex's past in the post WWII days and wish there would have been more of this or something more substantial about Alex's character because I truly wanted to get to know her.

The flow of the novel had a disjointed feel as there were unknown spans of time that were unaccounted for where the reader does not know what has occurred in that time. This mainly coincides with Simon and Alex's relationship and when they see each other (once again shows the overall point that this book is about their relationship), however, after some time you do get used to the flow, it was just a bit annoying at the beginning of the book.

Overall, I do not think that this book is for me due to the fact of all the romance and the relationship/sex aspect being the major premise within the book. However, I do think that those who like their romance novels that show a relationship that unfolds, even if the flow is a little bit disjointed, like the mysterious man aspect with a slight bit of mystery would enjoy Gilson's novel, but it was just not for me.

Cheers!!!

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