Joss cares for very few people, and it's been years since she has felt anything deeply toward another. That changes when she takes on an apprentice in her work, a girl codenamed Echo. The two become attracted to each other quickly, slowly falling deeply in love. Yet can a happy ending or true love exist for people such as them?
Examples:
- Abusive Parents: Joss's dad would make her tell exactly what boys were thinking about doing with her when they'd call, as “crude mind games” in her words.
- Age-Gap Romance: Joss gets involved with Echo, who is about fifteen years her junior.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Joss mortifies her daughter Madison by inquiring into her sex life with her boyfriend.
- The Apprentice: Echo becomes Joss's apprentice in the assassin trade.
- Auto Erotica: Joss fingers Echo to climax while they're sitting in the car at one point.
- The Beard: Unbeknownst to him, Joss married Colin solely for a "normal" cover in her job-she's actually a lesbian.
- Beneath Notice: Joss's cover as an ordinary businesswoman, wife and mother is designed for her to be this overall, along with acting normally on jobs. Her being female likely also helps, as hitwoman really don't figure in most people's expectations.
- Blackmail: One of Joss's targets is a young woman who was a married politician's lover, and blackmailed him after getting pregnant with his baby. His attempt to bribe her into going away just got her more ammunition, as she recorded this.
- Bondage Is Bad: Joss, the Villain Protagonist, and her lover Echo (her apprentice in the art of contract murder) are into mild BDSM. However, it at least is shown to be fully consensual and loving, rather than bad in itself, so this is a bit downplayed.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Joss thinks admiringly about how buxom Shannon is while looking at her photos.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Joss meets a female detective who's secretly with her partner (also a woman). She's quite jealous, easily provoked to hit Joss after she hits on her partner. Joss used it as a distraction to get away after poisoning the man they're protecting.
- Closet Gay:
- Joss is not openly a lesbian, rather having the façade of a straight marriage and kids.
- Joss and Echo's second target is in a clandestine relationship with another man. From what they say, his lover's wife or her family are behind the hit, to “keep up appearances”. For apparently the first time, she empathizes toward a target, and lets him go... Only for him to be shot immediately by Echo, her apprentice.
- While pretending she's an FBI agent, Joss meets two closeted female detectives living in New Orleans. The two of them are (extra-legally) married and out to their loved ones, but not at work, as Louisiana is less progressive about LGBT+ folks. Not to mention they might not be allowed to remain partners.
- Closet Key: One half of a same-sex female couple who Joss meets hadn't been attracted to any women before meeting her wife.
- Cop Killer: One of Joss's early hits was an NYPD detective who'd been investigating a gambling ring. She managed to seduce and kill him, then made this look like she'd been struck by the hitman before he'd been murdered. The cops bought this, though the criminal who ordered the hit is later arrested for ordering his death.
- Crocodile Tears: Joss can cry on command when necessary to deceive people.
- Dark Action Girl: Joss is a highly capable assassin who can use a gun and also trains in hand-to-hand combat as it may be necessary sometime. She trains Echo to perform as a hitwoman like her.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Joss is a cold-blooded assassin who rarely feels remorse. Her first kill was of her lover's murderer in college, whom she clearly cared about. Later she also falls in love with Echo, who's her apprentice, and they become lovers. She has a husband and two children, but really cares only about her daughter among them.
- Experimented in College: Joss convinced her roommate Crystal that them kissing or later sleeping together was just harmless college experimentation. It wasn't for Joss however-she genuinely loved Crystal, and avenged her murder.
- Fair Cop:
- Shannon, Colin's lover, is a very beautiful, redhaired female police officer.
- A couple female detectives in New Orleans whom Joss meets are attractive too.
- Females Are More Innocent: Invoked, both in the book's title and the story itself. Joss is well aware that most people don't expect a hitwoman, and it's a large part of why she's been very successful as one, enhancing it often by her seducing her target or somehow acting wounded.
- Forced Out of the Closet: Joss publicly outs two female detectives who are secretly married, as part of a distraction when she's poisoning a target.
- Frame-Up: Joss is framed for supposedly attacking her husband's cop mistress, which then justifies her shooting her dead.
- From Bad to Worse: Joss notes that many clients seem to think killing somebody will get rid of their problems. Often however it just makes things worse, as now they can sometimes be charged with murder as well and get into even more trouble.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Joss and Echo easily seduce a target by dancing together then promising that he can have a threesome with them.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Joss quickly learns a female detective is hot-tempered and easily pushes her into violence through hitting on her wife.
- Has a Type: Joss likes lean, athletic women, and admits not only Echo has this look but also her. She thinks it's probably the case that most people find versions of themselves attractive.
- Hitman with a Heart: Not much of one, but Joss does once let a target get away after learning he's being targeted just for being a gay closeted lover of another man, but he's shot by Echo almost immediately.
- Honey Trap: Joss seduces people when useful for becoming close with her target, and notes that men are especially easy, rarely thinking twice about allowing women into their houses.
- Hyper-Awareness: Joss is trained to notice all surrounding details, and trains Echo to as well, so she can better kill people then get away clean.
- I Have a Family: Joss's first seen victim attempts to sway her using this. He thinks it's worked after she asks about his daughter. It's only to get tips about what her own daughter, also a teenager, might like for her birthday. She kills him remorselessly after getting this.
- Impersonating an Officer: Joss pretends she's a New Orleans detective and FBI agent while infiltrating law enforcement to get near a target.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence:
- Echo masturbates in bed opposite Joss after witnessing her first hit. Joss's thoughts indicate she had done the same thing and that it's common as a reaction.
- Echo later masturbates once again in the wake of killing someone.
- Irony: It's a book about Joss, a woman who's very skilled at "hitting" (contract killings) and will certainly hit in the more general sense as well, along with her female apprentice Echo.
- Jerkass: Joss is a huge jerk toward most people when she's allowed to get away with this (aside from a very few). She even drives to other towns just for venting her repressed anger after maintaining a nice mom and wife image most of the time.
- Kavorka Man: Joss' husband Colin is neither handsome nor charming, yet somehow he has a very beautiful younger mistress who's crazy about him and will even kill her to have him all for herself. She's not even his first mistress.
- Killer Cop: Shannon, a police officer, murders Joss to get rid of her so she can have Colin, making it look like self-defense.
- Lack of Empathy: Joss feels absolutely nothing toward most people, her targets especially, except for annoyance.
- Love Confession: Echo confesses her love for Joss after the latter rescues her in New Orleans. Joss later reciprocates, and means it-the first time in decades that's been true when she said the words.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Joss pegs one half of a female couple early on as the “butch” one (there isn't much explicit about them to support it though). She also presents herself in a slightly more butch manner at one point when out with Echo while seducing a target.
- Murder by Mistake: On her first solo hit, Echo screws up and shoots the wrong person, putting the cops on her tail while she runs. Joss has to track her down and fix things.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Joss is murdered at the end by her husband's mistress, who had demanded she divorce him. She had tried ironically, but he wouldn't agree in the circumstances they had at the time. Joss told her this, and she killed Joss to get rid of the obstacle.
- Murder, Inc.: Synergistic Business Services, a company officially specializing in mediating corporate disputes but actually arranging contract killings. They have assassins around the US and elsewhere. Joss and Echo are just two, with Miles their only actual link to the business. Sometimes though Joss goes to an office where she does fake work but actually just surfs the Internet. It's mentioned that the FBI suspects their activities, but can't prove it-they killed one agent who'd come too close.
- Offing the Offspring: A married politician orders the murder of his pregnant mistress, who blackmailed him due to her pregnancy, even though it would kill their baby too.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Joss is short for Jocelyn, but she prefers it to that and is mostly called by her nickname.
- Throughout most of the book, Echo is only called that since it's her cover name. Joss knows her last name, Barrett, while deliberately not finding out her true first name. Echo comes to prefer this too, saying that Echo is her real name. However, it turns out that her first name is (legally) Audrey.
- Parental Neglect: Joss didn't really want to have children, and largely lets her husband Colin raise hers. She therefore is often unaware of what her kids are into, or in her son's case his age and whether he's bathing unassisted now.
- Parental Substitute: Joss told Greta, her mentor, she was like her mother before killing her. She was very sad to. Her birth mother was "hardly maternal" to her apparently, so Greta filled the void a bit.
- Plot Hole:
- According to the first chapter Joss had her daughter right after marrying Colin. Chapter six says her daughter was six ten years after their marriage however.
- Joss says the only time she cried over a job was for killing her mentor Greta. Then she also says she'd cried after killing a woman who put out a hit on herself.
- Polyamory:
- Joss and Colin eventually agree on having an open marriage when both of them have confessed to their past adultery, deciding it's better to simply be open about sleeping with other people while still staying married.
- Joss also tells Echo she's free to have casual sex with other people while they're on separate hits, with her saying it's necessary to blow off steam after it's complete.
- Pragmatic Pansexuality: Joss is a lesbian, though she has had sex with men for different reasons which serve her goals.
- Professional Killer: Joss is a seasoned, efficient assassin. She trains Echo in the same trade. The company which they work for also has many others on the payroll.
- Psycho Lesbian: Averted. Though Joss is a hitwoman who feels no remorse at all, there's no suggestion that this has any correlation with her being a lesbian; indeed, her only real feelings are toward her female lovers and her interactions with them are the most humanizing things about her.
- Queer Romance: Joss's romance with her apprentice Echo is a main theme of the novel.
- Really Gets Around: Joss and Colin both cheat frequently on each other, with her having a large number of one-night stands while he had several mistresses.
- Revenge: The novel ends with Echo just about to kill Shannon in revenge for her killing Joss earlier.
- Sarcastic Title: The book is about a very skilled hitwoman, who trains a female apprentice too.
- Self-Defense Ruse:
- Joss pretended she was defending herself against the man who'd raped and murdered her friend/lover Crystal, though she actually lured him into attacking her deliberately, then had killed him. She realizes she's in trouble when the police see through it, but Myles arrives, recognizing her potential as a killer and makes it go away (helped by the fact the cops sympathize with it, laws aside).
- This is later used by Shannon to murder Joss, planting a gun in her hand so it's apparently justified.
- Shower of Love: Joss and Echo first have sex in the shower.
- Suicide by Assassin: Joss and Echo kill a man near the end whom they realize put the hit on himself, as he had HIV/AIDS. She mentions a previous example of a woman with Huntington's doing it too.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Both of Joss's children weren't planned. Since then, she's tried to avoid having sex with her husband without any protection.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Joss uses poison she's placed surreptitiously in targets' drinks to kill them more than once.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Joss becomes involved with Echo, whom she's training to be an assassin.
- Technical Virgin: Madison tells Joss she's “technically a virgin” due to only giving her boyfriend blowjobs and handjobs.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Miles, Joss and Echo all just look like ordinary people, though their business is murder for hire. Joss even goes out of her way to seem normal, marrying and having kids just to fit in (despite this not really being her wish), since most don't suspect a middle class family woman.
- Unholy Matrimony: Joss and her apprentice Echo, both of them unrepentant cold-blooded assassins, fall for each other. Their love is genuine, deep and would be sweet if they weren't horrible otherwise.
- Vigilante Man:
- Joss's first murder was of the man who had raped and murdered her roommate/lover Crystal.
- Echo murders an abusive husband whom she'd seen.
- Villain Protagonist: The main character is an unrepentant hitwoman who feels only annoyance toward most people.
- Women Are Wiser: Joss and Echo take advantage of this belief, since very few people suspect women will be assassins. Even when not combined with explicit seduction, it helps them get the drop on people many times.
- Would Hurt a Child: Joss kills a young woman who's revealed to be pregnant afterward. The father, a politician, had ordered the hit as she was blackmailing him over it. Evidently the fact this would kill his own baby didn't stop him. Joss just demands a twenty percent increase, since she won't kill for free.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Joss got away with killing a cop after seducing him by hitting herself, making it look like the killer had struck her then cut his throat. His colleagues bought this (helped by the fact she'd slept with several others too), thinking it's because she was not a target and the hitman spared her as a result since they don't kill for free.
