Target 75

I’ll be honest: *Target 75* pissed me off in the best way. Claire is the kind of protagonist who makes *terrible* decisions with such single-minded conviction that you’ll find yourself arguing with your headphones. That’s the mark of great writing—Thorn doesn’t just tell you Claire is damaged; she forces you to *live* in the clench of her jaw, the way her nightmares bleed into daylight. The plot unfolds like a series of controlled detonations: short, brutal chapters that end on gut-punch revelations. There’s no fat here, no meandering subplots—just Claire, her list, and the escalating cost of her crusade. Tess Irondale’s narration is a masterclass in restraint. She resists the urge to over-dramatize, instead letting the text’s inherent tension breathe. Her Claire isn’t a scream-in-your-face action hero; she’s a woman who’s been hollowed out by loss, and Irondale nails the quiet moments—the way her voice cracks on a memory, or how a single word (*“next”*) can sound like a death sentence. My only critique? The pacing stumbles slightly in the midsection, where a few targets blur together in a haze of violence. And while the ending lands with impact, it’s so bleak that listeners craving even a sliver of hope might walk away gutted. But that’s the point, isn’t it? This isn’t a story about healing. It’s about what happens when the fire inside you burns hotter than the world around you.