Hailey's War
Written by Jodi Compton
Narrated by Angela Dawe
4/5
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About this audiobook
Hailey Cain has a history of testing the limits of her fate: as a fearless bike messenger on the twisted, competitive streets of San Francisco; as a young female cadet in a sea of men at West Point. But Hailey also has secrets—the biggest of which led her to leave the academy just two months short of graduation, two months away from becoming a lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
Now, scraping and fighting her way through life, Hailey finds focus only when she’s in motion. When an old friend from her former life in Los Angeles calls in a favor, Hailey doesn’t have to think too long before she accepts the mission. She will escort a young Mexican woman across the border to a remote mountain town in the Sierra Madre. But what happens there will alter Hailey’s life irrevocably.
From the dustiest Mexican roads to the meanest streets of East L.A., Hailey finds herself ensnared in a war more deviant and ugly than any she trained for as a cadet. Deep in the gang underworld, pursued by mobsters and authorities alike, Hailey must use her instincts to stay alive—and to protect the innocent from a past that still haunts her.
Awash in sharp gangland details and unrelenting in its pace, Hailey’s War introduces one of the most memorable heroines in recent crime fiction. Hailey Cain is complicated, tough, and unnerving—and her journey into the depths of despair and desperation is as harrowing as it is impossible to put down.
Jodi Compton
JODI COMPTON, like Hailey Cain, is “Californian in a way a lot of people are Californian; I was born someplace else.” Jodi has lived in California since the age of one, excepting a brief stint in Minneapolis. She is the author of two previous crime novels, The 37th Hour and Sympathy Between Humans. She currently lives in Northern California with her Lab mix, Lady Bird.
More audiobooks from Jodi Compton
The 37th Hour Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sympathy Between Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Hailey's War
18 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hailey dropped out of West Point for reasons she prefers not to discuss and becomes a bike messenger is pulled into a gang to help out a friend from school without knowing just what all that entails. She is smart and this action packed thriller has heart as we discover along with Hailey just what she's made of and what lengths she'll go to to make things right.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. Very entertaining. Hailey's a tough cookie. Issues with LA girl gangs, Greek syndicate mob bosses and their (very bad) henchmen, a kidnapped pregnant teen make for exciting reading. Recommended!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book caught me completely by surprise. I expected it to be more young adult than adult and for some reason I really didn't expect it to be such a great thriller.Hailey's War is complusively readable (as in I dare you to put it down). Smart, engaging, elegantly plotted, this is a thriller with a difference - interesting and competent female characters run the show here - and what a show it is.Ms. Compton has carefully created characters who feel real, but who also have plausible reasons for the skills they have acquired. These are not secretaries who suddenly display a penchant for martial arts and running and gunning. Rather, these are characters who have earned their knowledge in the real world of hard knocks. Compton writes great dialogue and has an eye for differentiations of place. That the book is taut, fast-paced, and exactly the right length proves she's good at editing, too.I'm off to find more books by this talented author. I can't believe I missed her until now.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hailey’s War by Jodi Compton was released on June 15th, 2010 by the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House (Hardcover, $22.99, 336 pages; also available as a Kindle edition and in various audio formats).Hailey Cain is a 24 year-old West Point dropout with a past she doesn’t talk about and no future. She lives in San Francisco, earns her living as a bike messenger, and makes a hobby of discouraging people from jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge. She has only two people that she is close to– her successful music-producer cousin CJ and her friend Serena, leader of an all-female gang in L.A. It is when Serena calls asking for a favor that everything in Hailey’s small, precariously built life comes tumbling down.It doesn’t seem like a terribly big deal. A cousin of one of Serena’s girls needs an escort across the border into Mexico so that she can take care of a sick grandmother. Hailey starts to suspect that maybe there’s more to the story when they’re caught by a bunch of thugs out on the Mexican highway, she’s shot and left for dead, and the cousin is kidnapped. So begins Hailey’s personal mission against a powerful enemy that she knows nothing about, a war which will draw her into complex web of choices about loyalty, self-preservation, courage, and her own past.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gangs; LA and San Fran. Lots of great writing and very intriguing characters. Look for more from her."Twenty-three-year-old Hailey Cain is going nowhere fast. She’s a bike messenger on the free-for-all streets of San Francisco, trying to outrun memories of a bright future that went bad. Then she gets a call from an old schoolmate, Serena Delgadillo, now a notorious gangbanger in East Los Angeles. Serena asks Hailey to drive a teenage girl to her family’s home in the mountains of Mexico, and to Hailey, it seems like an easy job. But when Hailey wakes up from a coma in Mexican hospital, she realizes this was anything but an innocent road trip. The ‘easy job’ turns into a obsessed search for answers, from L..A.’s gangland to San Francisco’s back alleys to the high Sierra. It’s a quest that will test her strength and her loyalties as Hailey seeks not just answers, but justice. "
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The word adrenaline is what comes to mind as I try to find a way to describe this story. This book is like a sleek, sexy, ten cyclinder sports car going 180 mph in a world full of four door, four cylinder Ford Escorts going 45. Hailey is 24, has failed or dropped out of West Point, and is living paycheck to paycheck as a bike messenger in San Fran. She's got this friend tho, Serena, a hard as nails Latina gangsta chick who one day calls Hailey up asking for a favor. Hailey, bored with her life, agrees to take a young Mexican girl back over the border supposedly to take care of her dying grandmother. Hailey gets more than she bargained for... Somewhere in a Mexican tunnel, Hailey and Nidia, the Mexican girl jumping the fence the other way, get ambushed. Hailey wakes up from a coma in a Mexican hospital and Nidia is missing. Hailey can't let things lie tho. Her training to be an officer takes over and partly due to a guilty conscience for having failed the girl and partly because she has to prove she has what it takes to be an officer after all, Hailey makes it her mission to find Nidia. Enter the world of gang beat ins, stolen cars, threatening phone calls, broken pinky fingers, and sig sauers and you have Hailey's war. Can Hailey find Nidia, keep her safe, survive the world of L.A gang life, and prove herself a good leader? Would make a great, action packed movie about chicas con cojones. I hope this is the first of a series. Be interesting to see what becomes of Hailey. The ending was fabulous.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A book not to be missed this year is Hailey's War by Jodi Compton. Hailey's life has gone deeply south as she doesn't graduate from West Point with her class. She goes West in search of her cousin C.J. who has made it big in hip-hop and would love to give her a place to stay. While driving her beater car one afternoon, a toddler runs out in front of her and is killed. Not her fault but the child is the only son of Lucius Marsellus. A music mogul in his own right and not a person to be messin' with. The baby's nanny disappears and so must Hailey - quicklyBeing the independent person she is, with CJ's help, Hailey moves on up the coast to San Francisco where she becomes a bike messenger. Not a safe job, but it pays fair and keeps her in shape. She receives an unexpected call from a high school friend asking for a small favor - would she help one of Serena's friends get home to Mexico to see her ailing grandmother? The pay is great and Hailey takes a few days off to drive Nidia home.And that's when a simple act becomes the larger cross that Hailey must bare. Nidia managed to leave a out a few things when she wanted to travel back home. Like that fact that she is pregnant with the only grandchild of Anton Skouras, devil reincarnated. Anton's son had just died and Nidia had been his caregiver and lover. Anton wants the baby. Badly.This novel was a stay up all nighter! Hailey's time in East L.A. with Serena and her gang was written so well that I could close my eyes and picture the house in its entirety. The West Point issue keeps arising in some odd places but the focus of the story is Hailey and friends against mobsters with nasty pruning shears and large guns. The ending will leave you staring into space for awhile and believe me, it's not what you'd expect. Great job, Ms. Compton!