Review of "Invincible" by Kay Brooks

​Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)

Hayley Turner from Invincible might be the early favorite to win Hottest Character in our 2026 Clash of Champions contest!

And this is only the third book we've read and reviewed so far this contest. We've already pretty much decided that Hayley clinches a spot.

Almost to a comical degree, everything in this book seems to build her up as this ultra-hot, super-desirable yet unsuspecting bundle of hotness. She has long auburn hair, green eyes, long legs, a slim but athletic figure, and apparently the ability to make grown men forget what they were doing simply by walking into a room.

Even her own bodyguard seems to spend half the novel reminding himself that he is supposed to be guarding her rather than gawking at her, pinning her down and subduing her in sensual positions, and putting her in bondage for... quality and training purposes... every ten pages or so. And rather than being pissed off, put off, or even mildly inconvienced, she's always like “How dare you... same time tomorrow?”
Seriously, there is so much sexual tension in this book that it's borderline hilarious. It's kinda like those really cheesy digital shorts that you have to pay for with Bitcoin to unlock the next scene (a friend told us this) in which the actors and actresses are clearly hired for their looks and sex appeal. They have almost no acting skills, the plots are whatever (the mean people are usually super irrationally mean for some reason), most of the actors barely speak English so the tonation and pronunciation is all off, and everything is just facilitating the next saucy scene.

But, hey, who's complaining?

But if Hayley were nothing more than attractive, Invincible would not be nearly as interesting as it is. Kay Brooks surrounds all that sexy sauciness with a character who has endured horrific violence, witnessed the murder of her best friend, survived being beaten nearly to death herself, testified against a dangerous organized crime figure, abandoned the life and career she once knew, and spent years hiding under an assumed identity. Hayley Turner essentially disappeared.

In her place came Amelia Cox (Gosh, her last name has to be Cox, huh? Like the innuendo for c**ks? We're not even going to be subtle about it?), the quiet woman living alone in a secluded Vermont home, and Jillian McLeod, the successful murder mystery author whose true identity almost nobody knows.

There is something wonderfully dark about what Hayley does with her trauma. Rather than allowing William Ortiz, the man responsible for destroying her former life, to disappear into memory, she repeatedly murders versions of him in her novels. Brooks introduces this idea beautifully in the opening pages. A woman is brutally attacked while being interrogated about Hayley's location, only for the story to suddenly jump one thousand miles away, where Hayley is dictating an eerily similar murder scene for her newest book. She imagines Ortiz as the victim over and over again, turning fiction into an emotional punching bag.

Anyway, Hayley's fictional murders become frighteningly relevant when Savannah Hughes, the woman serving as the public face of Jillian McLeod, is found murdered.

That brings Liam Walker crashing back into Hayley's carefully controlled life. Liam is Hayley's former bodyguard, self-defense instructor, security expert, professional pain in the butt, and eventually something considerably more complicated. The chemistry between these two is one of the strongest, most captivating, and hilarious parts of the book. Like we said, it always feels like everything is leading to these two going at it like two frisky rabbits on a trampoline.

We're so surprised that Liam's name isn't something like Liam Everhard, Liam Steele, Liam Morningwood, Liam Longstaff, Liam Rockhard, Liam Stiffmore, Liam Firmingham, Liam Bonesteel, Liam Hardman... cause this guy... let's just say he's what the book calls "iron-hard" in a certain nether region pretty much all the gosh darn time.

And who can blame him? He's got Hottie Hayley within arms reach most of the time. Gosh, there's this really steamy scene with the two of them in the gym (or something). Hottie Hayley is training, and Liam Everhard is just watching her train--being described in the most provacative way possible, and Liam Stiffmore becomes increasingly more... stiff... understandably.

It kinda makes us chuckle, having read Kay Brooks's other books. Almost all of these books features some sort of ultraviolent scary-crazy-murder-guy operating in the background, but everything else about the books seem mostly for entertainment. It's almost like having an episode of Sesame Street, but Oscar the Grouch is just secretly murdering people in the background where no one looks and notices.

Sorry that our heads are kinda in the gutter, but the book kinda begs for it--yes, there are ultraserious stuff happening in the background, but it's kinda hard (no pun intended) to take it seriously when most of the book's focus seems to be on when these two leads-of-opposite-genders are gonna do horizontal stuff.

You can kinda call this a mystery or a murder mystery, but it reads a lot more like a steamy romantic comedy.

Anyway... The result is an entertaining push-and-pull relationship in which Liam cooks for her, nags her, trains her, monitors her, protects her, irritates her, remodels things she did not ask him to remodel, and generally invades every peaceful corner of her existence while insisting that he is only doing his job. Hayley responds exactly as one might expect. She argues with him about nearly everything.

Their relationship gives the book some much-needed levity because Brooks is perfectly willing to interrupt murder, trauma, organized crime, and assassination attempts with two stubborn adults fighting over patio pavers. And somehow, it works.

We actually enjoyed some of the quieter domestic scenes more than several of the action sequences. Watching Liam cook while Hayley disappears into her writing, seeing them work on the patio together, following their self-defense training, and watching Hayley gradually realize that she may be writing Liam into the male lead of her newest mystery gives their relationship room to exist beyond all the lusty staring and iron-hard... developments.

Their personalities also clash for reasons deeper than the usual "they secretly like each other but pretend they don't" romantic-comedy formula. Hayley desperately wants independence because it was violently taken away from her, while Liam is almost pathologically determined to protect her because he knows what it means to lose someone he loves. That creates some legitimately interesting tension, especially when Hayley discovers that Liam has hidden cameras throughout her property and home, secretly monitors her movements, and built concealed escape routes and safe rooms into the house.

Which is creepy. But also... People actually are trying to murder her.
So Liam keeps being annoyingly right.

The danger escalates through intruders, surveillance, kidnappings, assassination attempts, drones, compromised safe locations, and enough elaborate security precautions that eventually we wondered whether Hayley and Liam might be safer relocating to the International Space Station. It can become repetitive, though. Liam is extremely capable, Hayley becomes extremely capable, and Murdock is extremely capable. After a while, some of the hired killers might as well be wearing red shirts from "Star Trek."

Murdock, by the way, deserves some love. Hayley's Belgian Malinois isn't merely there because every isolated heroine in the woods apparently needs a cool dog. He's a protection dog, tracker, companion, early-warning system, and all-around four-legged badass. He's also possibly the only character who can get along with Hayley and Liam at the same time.

The larger criminal plot eventually reveals that William Ortiz may not be behind everything after all. His supposedly dead son Simon is very much alive, very much evil, and responsible for a startling number of tragedies throughout Hayley and Liam's lives. Maybe a few too many. By the time Simon finishes explaining everything he's done, he starts sounding less like a criminal mastermind and more like the human embodiment of every bad thing that has ever happened to these people.

Still, Simon's confrontation with Hayley gives the novel something important: a chance for her to finally fight back. She isn't a damsel who spends an entire book learning self-defense only to wait for Liam to rescue her. She uses what she has learned, survives, and proves that all those training scenes mattered for something beyond giving these two excuses to roll around on top of each other.

That's ultimately what makes the title work. Hayley isn't "invincible" because nobody can hurt her. She's been hurt horribly. She's lost people she loves, been forced into hiding, suffered nightmares and isolation, and lived with the knowledge that people around her could die because of her. She's invincible because none of it manages to destroy her.

The Celtic knot necklace reinforces that theme, although Brooks can't resist pulling one more Liam Everhard special. Hayley believes the necklace came from her father as a reminder that she is "invincible like the diamond." Turns out... well, you'll find out if you read it.

There is a very entertaining book underneath all of this. Invincible has murder, romance, organized crime, secret identities, hidden rooms, surveillance systems, assassination attempts, kidnapping, self-defense training, a badass Belgian Malinois, an absurdly attractive heroine, and a male lead whose circulatory system deserves its own supporting-character credit.

Beneath all the craziness is also a sincere story about surviving something that should have destroyed you and eventually deciding that merely surviving isn't enough. Hayley doesn't just want to stay alive. She wants her life back.

And by the end, she finally gets to start taking it back.

Well... That and Liam Everhard.

Check it out on Amazon!