Blurb:

My Thoughts: Adversary is the second book in the Ganzfield series and after how much I enjoyed the mindblowing adventure of Minder I was excited to see how Kate Kaynak would up the pace of the first book, and I have to say she triumphed! Adversary is an even more thrilling story where the breakneck speed of action keeps you glued to your chair, turning the pages as if in a trance.  

(I am sorry if some parts of my review will be a comparison between Minder and Adversary, but after the intense reading experience of Minder, I was expecting the same elation and want to tell you how Adversary fared.)

So much happens in Adversary that you feel like you are in the middle of a whirlwind. Action after action propel the plot forward and you feel like you’re speeding down the highway at breakneck speed. The emotional intensity of the terrors the characters go through was palpable and will move you.

Just like Minder, Adversary gripped me from start to finish. What I missed the most compared to the first book (which I loved), was that in Minder besides the fast paced, action packed plot there was an emotional journey and discovery of Maddie. Here in Adversary I felt that due to the high speed of everything happening at once this aspect was relegated to the background and when the emotional parts got the center stage I found them repetitive. Maddie and Trevor are comfortable in their warm and intense love for each other, and Kate Kaynak conveyed that wonderfully both in Minder and Adversary. They share such deep understanding of each other that it is a more solid foundation for a relationship than most have. However I found the repetitions of Maddie’s internal gushing a bit tiring since they added no new aspect to their relationship, and this brought the novel down a bit for me.

I was also sad to see that the wonderful secondary characters didn’t get nearly enough ‘screen time’. Sure they were introduced in Minder, but the whole supporting cast is made of such great characters that I would have liked to read more about them. In Adversary Kate Kaynak introduced a new character: Zach, who I have to say I liked a lot and was sorry to see leave the group so soon (I felt that taking him out of the equation of Maddie-Trevor-and himself was too easy and simple, would have liked to see him stir things up a bit within the group and between Maddie and Trevor in a better way). I hope he will return and that the cast will absolve him.

I applaud Kate Kaynak for not shying away from talking about sex and intimacy in a YA novel. She expressed Maddie and Trevor’s urges extremely well, while still maintaining it to be a responsible, mature decision about two people coming together because of their love and not to quench some hormonal urges.

Adversary took things even further than Minder: the danger got more serious, the confrontations grew bloodier, Kate Kaynak was not afraid to kill off some main secondary characters and bringing grief to the characters, and thus making the story darker, everything here made seem the conflict of Minder rather like a child play in comparison.

Verdict: Adversary is a very fast, gripping read, one that you won’t be able to put down until you have finished it. Kate Kaynak is the queen of cliffhangers and she certainly knows how to weave a thrilling story with continuous loops of action. In Adversary everything escalates: the danger, the heartache, the thrill, the violence. It seems the series is maturing and Kate Kaynak is not afraid to bring the story and her characters to darker places. All in all Adversary is a great second instalment of the Ganzfield series and I can’t wait to read more!

I give Adversary 3.5 bookies!