Kenzie Book 1: to Be Free

Kenzie St. Clair has been trained since childhood to be the ultimate government operative. She performs her missions with uncanny skill, strength, and efficiency. She never fails. However, the price for this efficiency is that she has also been trained to suppress all emotion. As a result, there is no skill beyond Kenzie, except for the ability to have and express feelings. Jeff Dwyer is a widower with five sons. He is a multibillionaire and the owner of the corporations Dwyer Industries and Sentry Technology. He runs this corporation as a cover for his other company, Global Relief, which secretly assists victims of natural disasters. Since the death of his wife over ten years ago, his entire life has been dedicated to his work. By pure chance, one of Kenzie's missions brings her to the heart of Global Relief where she and Jeff meet. Encountering Jeff stirs up feelings in Kenzie that she cannot understand or even identify. Jeff's feelings for Kenzie are instant and obvious, but he is unsure how to proceed with someone like Kenzie. While Jeff and Kenzie learn to trust each other, and learn just how far their feelings for each other can go, they also have yet to learn that they have a common enemy. Cam Rowan is wealthy, powerful, and ruthless. He uses money and people to achieve his goals. Although he has dealt with Kenzie before, and would not hesitate to eliminate her if she gets in his way, his target right now is Global Relief. Kenzie must now protect the lives of both herself and the Dwyers, while at the same time she faces a struggle within her own mind that could make her choose between her career as an operative and a possible future with a family.



The poet Alexander Pope famously said, "Woman's at best a contradiction still." He might have been describing the heroine of Marilee Worrell's novel, Kenzie. At age forty-two, Kenzie St. Clair is unkissed, a virgin, and completely naive about personal relationships. She's also a trained military operative, a hired killer on the run from one of her victims' revenge-seeking brothers. She is muscular but feminine, confident but awkward. The question posed by Worrell is whether such a complicated woman can find happiness and security the peace of letting someone else know her true self.

Kenzie jumps between genres, though it mostly uses the conventions of a romance novel. It's no accident that Kenzie St. Clair is an athletic, busty blonde with "coral pink lips." Her friends, the Dwyer family five motherless teenage boys and their widowed father are similarly good-looking. There is also a small army of enemies, other operatives at work in a conspiracy to take down Kenzie and her mission. In most cases, this multitude of characters works well in Kenzie. They add fuel to the plot when things slow down, and keep the reader on her toes. At first, distinguishing between the children is difficult, but their personalities come out more as the story unfolds, and the sibling interactions are realistic and well-considered. Including this family dynamic in the novel helps offset the gun-blazing, explosive spy plotline. In many ways it grounds the novel, and allows Worrell to show off her strong points: interpersonal relationships, dialogue, and body language.

When Worrell focuses on Kenzie St. Clair and her internal struggle to develop lasting relationships, Kenzie glides along effortlessly. Though the novel starts out a little rough, it soon eases into a frisky pace that keeps the pages turning. There s plenty of inner monologue to let the reader know how her feelings are changing. "Kenzie sighed softly to herself," Worrell writes. "His reaction unexpectedly gripped her heart. She had heard the disappointment in his voice. Jeff Dwyer was making
it very hard to leave."These little glimpses into Kenzie's psyche make her a more believable