Transformed POTUS by Suzanne Falter
Charley is getting married to Electra and he can't believe he is so lucky to have found her.
They are in Las Vegas and he works as a protector for the President.
She is a new agent and knows how to drive the car defensively. She works at the farm in VA so it's a bit difficult for them to get together.
President is just a kid and lives with his mother at the White House. The biscuit is crucial. It holds codes that deal with nuclear things.
Charley has to also find girls for the president after they are interrogated...
Story is also following Electra as she gambles and wins big...
Lots of secrets and they come at you from all angles as people know one another from their previous lifes. Everything and ten some of things you can just about imagine: mafia, drugs, prostitutes, trans gender relations, homosexual relations...It's all so believable also.
Received this review copy from the author and this is my honest review. ( )

Charley is a transsexual CIA informant. Frankie is a lesbian police sergeant. Pamela is a Manhattan socialite tuned high-profile Dominatrix. Randy is an evangelical Christian fundamentalist. All four are experiencing something of a crisis in their lives, leading them to question their identities. Precisely how and where those lives intersect will leave them Transformed.

Suzanne Falter & Jack Harvey have crafted an intriguing novel that is both funny and disturbing, thrilling and romantic. It is origins are rather dark - a “Kill the Fags” campaign has birthed a terrorist plot to destroy the ‘hedonists’ of San Francisco - but the characters serve to bring some light (and even some romance) into it. It is a very emotional story, as you might expect, but be prepared for those emotions to shift over the course of the story.

While the terrorist campaign and overlapping CIA/SFPD investigations serve to propel the plot forward, it is the characters who make it worth following. Charley is brilliantly portrayed, capturing the fears and the doubts of a man still on the edge of his final transition, while Pamela is a warm, engaging, sympathetic woman who is slowly reclaiming her freedom and her sexuality. Frankie was a little too hard-boiled for me, but still a solid character, while Randy has enough depth to overcome our initial hatred as his own identity crisis comes to a height.

The cover blurb calls this a "funny thriller", but I would expand that somewhat to call it a "funny thriller with a lot of heart." Transformed could have played it straight (no pun intended), but the humor and the romance put the darker hatreds in context, and help guide the reader through to hopes of a happily ever after.


As reviewed by Sally at Bending the Bookshelf ( )

This is a well written and interesting story. I can't call it a mystery as the intended crime and criminal-to-be are known almost from the start. That is a format I don't usually enjoy as I like to work out what is going to happen. In this case, however, the personable characters and their development kept me reading happily, as did the insight into people with different life issues from my own. ( )

The introduction of the characters at the beginning of this book was a bit clunky, especially for Charley. I'm being a bit tough on this, giving it 3 instead of 4 stars, because I found Charley a bit unrealistic at times. I'm sure there are international spies who transitioned 25 years ago who have anxiety over using the mens room, but I found myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes when I read that part. (Really, Charley, check out STPs if you're so worried about using a stall)

Once the story got moving though, it was fast paced and I liked the characters. I was relieved that the villain was developed as a flawed human being and not as some cardboard stereotype. I would read another Charley & Electra story if it becomes a series.

Received this via Netgalley. ( )

This book was partially out of my wheel house. I don't read many books that are in the GBTQ+ part of the LGBTA+ spectrum, but I do love mysteries and this was billed as a sort of mystery/thriller and I love reading books set in San Francisco as well, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I am so glad that I got out of my little Lesbian Fiction world, because I thought t his book was just plain awesome!

It's the story of three people really, although there are only two characters named on the cover. The character not named on the cover is Frankie. She's a SFPD Police Sargent who's not having an easy time of it on the force. She believes in being a police officer, but has found herself surrounded by some other cops who don't quite believe that as strongly.

Then there's Charley, a mysterious sort of fellow who has a few secrets and while he has a good life, it isn't exactly what he wishes it could be. And Electra. She's the exact opposite, a scandal back in New York has meant that her life was splashed all over the tabloids and papers, and even after moving entirely across the country to San Francisco she's still known as the 'Society Dom'.

Still, even though on the surface they seem so different (there's also an age difference thrown in there) they're both connected in that they're trying so hard to find themselves. (While also saving San Francisco from death and worse).

Perhaps that's why I connected to the story so well, I recently caught some program or other on cable where a transman said something that really hit home for me (and that I'm paraphrasing, probably badly, so I apologize). That while these days everyone is talking about those in the world who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, truly we're all always transitioning. We're not all going through what those who are transgender are physically, but as humans we area always changing, or we should always be changing. Anyway...

I love books, all sorts of books, good books, bad for me books, all shapes, sizes, colors of books, but even when I love a book it doesn't always hit me in the feels. This one hit me in the feels. (Also, as a librarian the part in the sex library was just awesome).

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of New Heights Publishing. ( )