I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!
This book is apparently known by at least three different titles (Boy Nobody, I Am the Weapon, and The Hit), which confused the hell out of me at first. Once I sorted that out, though, I was good to go.
I had an extremely difficult time getting through the beginning of this book. It wasn't boring, it wasn't badly written, none of that stuff, but I still struggled. I must have reread the beginning sections three, four, maybe even five times before I finally got through it for good and read the rest of the book. Before that, I kept putting it down in favor of other things. The beginning of the book made me so nervous because I was afraid it was going to be violent/gory beyond what I could handle at the time, and I couldn't figure the main character out. I didn't know what his motivations were or why he was doing any of this, and I don't like seeing bad things happen to good people, through no real fault of their own, which, of course, happens in books all the time... but seeing it from the POV of the "bad guy" made me kinda go, "Oh no, oh no, oh no," and put the book down... repeatedly. I generally love books that do this kind of thing, but for some reason, in this book, it just made me super nervous and it was really difficult to continue.
Thankfully, the book wasn't too gory or violent, and once I actually got through the beginning and continued on, I found it to be a really enjoyable book. There were still scenes that made me really uncomfortable, but I think that was the point. The main character has a really unique voice, and I liked that a lot. His observations let the reader see things in a different way than if another person were telling this story, and I thought that gave the story a lot of character and let it stand out.
The main character is a type of assassin working for The Program, an organization which appears to work for or be part of the government. This book covers what happens when that assassin starts to question things. It's hard to go into why I found this book so unique compared to similar stories without spoiling anything, though. The premise of the book itself isn't unique by any means, but it still stood out from a lot of books I've read recently, and I'm still thinking about it long after finishing it.
Overall, I found this book pretty enjoyable once I was able to get through the beginning and get a sense of what was going on with the main character, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next installment in the series!