Series Review: Enemies with Benefits by Annika Martin and Joanna Chambers (2017)

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I couldn’t resist a spy vs spy title for our Enemies with Benefits week, and bonus points for already owning the book and having it on my TBR for who even knows how long. I didn’t realize, however, that the title Enemies with Benefits is the first eight chapters of Enemies Like You, and was issued as a reader magnet. So, now you know. 

If you like your enemies to lovers being proper enemies, like, they’re legit trying-to-kill-each-other enemies, but also they totally get off on it, then this here’s your book. 

Will is on what is essentially a suicide mission for the CIA after several other operatives were already murdered by the target’s bodyguard. Why is Will on a suicide mission? Because he has massive survivor’s guilt after he went into a sketchy situation for recon instead of sending one of his guys, but the truck was the real problem, not the building. And yet, even though Will is a giant army veteran who lumbers through his mission with single-minded determination, he is able to perceive what the CIA has not: the target’s girlfriend is not all that she appears to be.

What Will doesn’t realize is that the target’s girlfriend is actually his bodyguard, who dresses and behaves like a socialite ditz in order to be underestimated and to easily stay close to his protectee. Yes, the bodyguard is actually Kit, a svelte British man who is working deep cover on behalf of MI5. And for some reason, even though he’s dispatched every other threat to Polzin while working his own mission, he just can’t take out Will. So he tells the rest of his team that Will’s his stalker ex, reveals himself as a man, and makes Will give him a blow job to keep up the ruse. 

The first nine chapters have a lot of messed-up-so-why-is-it-so-hot? kinky sex as our protagonists play cat and mouse with each other, and the Enemies with Benefits portion is left on a cliffhanger, so how could you possibly stop reading? I don’t regret continuing. (Though both of these guys are completely OTT. But who am I to quibble with drama?)

I’d say probably the first ⅓ to ½ is the cat and mouse game in which Will and Kit hardly see each other but can’t quit thinking about each other and also are never able to actually kill each other, even though every time they meet the situation becomes riskier. Then the book kind of shifts in tone, and the relationship is also a new thing as they come to terms with each other. Things moved pretty quickly after the halfway point, both for the plot and for our protagonists. 

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Buy Now: Enemies with Benefits teaser | The full book

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