Dear Author » FBI

REVIEW: Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Jia — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:00:54 +0000

Dear Ms. Norris,

I admit I went into your debut novel not knowing much about it. I knew it was a YA. I had an idea about the basic set-up: a girl dies in a car accident and is brought back to life by a classmate. This somehow leads into a race against the clock to save the world which is about to be destroyed. Even the backcover blurb left me with more questions than answers. All these things piqued my interest enough to give your novel a try. It’s a decision I don’t regret.

It’s the last days of summer before junior year, and Janelle Tenner is spending them as she normally would. She’s lifeguarding at the beach because if there’s one thing she excells at, it’s swimming. She has a new boyfriend and is excited about it — but she could do without the accompanying drama involving his ex-girlfriend.

Then she’s hit by a truck. It’s exactly like the stories say — she sees a bright light and scenes from her life flash before her eyes. Janelle knows she’s dying. But inexplicably, she’s brought back from the dead to find one of the loner boys from her high school, Ben Michaels, leaning over her. Janelle can’t explain why but just like she knew she’d died, she knew Ben somehow brought her back to life.

Even though Ben hangs out with the stoners at her high school, Janelle is curious. She tries to find out more about him — especially how he could have possibly healed her fatal injuries. At the same time, Janelle discovers her FBI agent father is looking into her accident and that it’s somehow connected to a major case he’s currently working on.

Janelle can’t help herself and snoops into her father’s files. What she finds leads her to believe that the FBI has discovered a bioweapon capable of unleashing a deadly virus. But once she discovers the secret behind Ben’s mysterious ability, Janelle learns that the bomb in FBI custody is something much, much worse.

Unraveling is what you get when you mix 24, Veronica Mars, and X-Files. The fast pace and countdown conceit is reminiscent of 24. Janelle Tenner reminds me of Veronica Mars in many ways — she’s the daughter of a law enforcement official and she’s clever and likes putting together cases. There’s also that incident at a party involving a roofie. As for the X-Files part, there’s a lot of weirdness taking place in the first half of the book. Corpses being found of people with severe radiation burns. The truck that hit Janelle is a make and model no one has heard of. And of course there’s Ben, who can bring people back from the dead.

It sounds like a lot but I thought the book made the various elements work. I admit I made the mistake of assuming this was going to be a paranormal novel. I suppose it was the part where Ben healed Janelle. I tend to associate that with paranormals and fantasies. But it’s not, and I don’t want other readers to go in with that expectation. Instead it’s a soft SF thriller. I call it soft SF because the science is not really delved into or explored as much as you’d find in the harder SF titles. I don’t mind this because I prefer soft SF to hard but readers who like their science fiction hard and technical will be dissatisfied. This is especially true in the second half of the book, after we discover what the deal with Ben, the countdown, and the bomb is.

This is one of those rare cases where I believed the instant love between Janelle and Ben. Janelle is drawn to him because he saved her life. It’s reasonable to expect her to be curious about him and his ability. When she discovers that there’s more than meets the eye, I found it easy to believe she’d fall in love with him. I also thought Ben’s attraction to Janelle was believable as well — harder to accomplish since in the hands of another author, I might have considered his feelings creepy considering the reason why he’s drawn to her and has always been drawn to her. But as with Janelle’s fascination with Ben, I think it makes for someone to be drawn to the person who saved their life.

I liked the depiction of Janelle’s home life. It has its good points, but it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. She loves her FBI agent father but there’s a deep thread of resentment there because he’s never home. This wouldn’t be as big an issue if it weren’t for the fact that her mother is mentally ill and not even remotely functional. In effect, Janelle is left with the responsibility of taking care of her mother and also raising her younger brother. There’s a particularly poignant scene in the novel where Janelle realizes that she’s essentially her brother’s maternal figure so losing her would hit him far harder than losing either of his true parents. It’s a sad truth but a real one.

It was nice to see that Janelle’s friendships weren’t all sunshine and roses or doom and gloom. A lot of the time, it’s either one extreme or the other. Alex is her best friend and they help each other out all the time, but they have their disagreements. Ben’s best friend cannot stand Janelle, but he’s willing to put up with her for Ben’s sake. Janelle’s relationship with her former best friend is a mess and illustrates that sometimes you can’t find it in yourself to forgive. I think platonic relationships can be especially hard to depict in a nuanced fashion so I liked that we saw many different variations.

On the other hand, I would have liked for there to be more female characters that were on Janelle’s side. There’s her ex-best friend. There’s her current boyfriend ex-girlfriend. There’s her mother. These women were not there to support to Janelle and in many ways, were there to cause her more problems. With the focus on her FBI father, her father’s partner, Ben and his friends, and her best friend, it would have nice to have other female characters who didn’t fall into that category.

I can understand why some readers would find this book to be jumbled and unfocused. There’s a lot going on, and I don’t disagree that the narrative could be streamlined. I didn’t mind the way it was told, but I can see why some readers would be irritated. I will say that if you enjoyed Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic and the way that narrative was told, you will probably not mind Unraveling’s execution.

There are a few other quibbles. There’s an event that happens midway through the book. When it becomes obvious who the potential suspects are, the perpetrator ends up being painfully obvious. Alex, Janelle’s best friend, does something at the end that struck me as out of character. It seemed more like he did it because the plot required that he do it, not because it was something his character would do. The thread involving Janelle’s former best friend and her current boyfriend’s ex just trails off into nothingness. For that matter, her current boyfriend vanishes into obscurity after Janelle decides their relationship isn’t working out and that Ben is worth pursuing instead.

All that said, I did enjoy Unraveling and devoured it. My ARC is almost 450 pages long and I didn’t think the book read like it at all. It was enjoyable and I hope that more SF thrillers along this vein are soon to follow in the genre. Word of warning to readers though: while I thought the ending was appropriate and fitting, there’s a cliffhanger regarding the romantic plot. You’ll know what I mean if you read the book. B+

My regards,
Jia

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REVIEW: Twisted by Laura Griffin (A Different Perspective)

Jayne — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:00:27 +0000

Dear Ms. Griffin,

I’ve mentioned before that the reason I don’t read much romantic suspense is that usually one aspect or the other gets shortchanged and I end up disappointed. Your books, however, have usually been the exception. A few little things in them might niggle but I’ve come to expect that in order to include both romance and suspense, everybody cuts a few corners here and there. It comes with the territory. Unfortunately, here I find that both the romance and suspense departments suffer to the extent that despite being glued to the ending to see how the killer is caught, I still can’t recommend this book.

Allison Doyle is a rookie homicide detective on the small town San Marco Police Department. She’s not on their most recent case, that of a young woman brutally assaulted and murdered, but when FBI profiler Mark Wolfe appears and talks to the officers who are working the crime, she senses something big. Acting on a hunch, she tracks him down and gets the details. Wolfe feels certain that the woman’s estranged boyfriend isn’t the culprit and that the real killer is a man Wolfe has tracked and sought for over ten years. Given the past sequence of the man’s crimes, Wolfe knows that they’re racing against the clock to prevent another woman from dying. But first he has to get the SMPD to believe his theory and get on board the investigation. And then they have to track down a cold blooded killer poised to strike again.

I was looking forward to this book for a number of reasons. First, it’s by you and for the most part your books have worked for me where few in this category do. Second, from the back blurb I knew Allison would be the heroine and, though she was a secondary character in “Snapped,” she had impressed me in that book. By the end of this book, I was left wondering what I had ever seen in her and wishing that she doesn’t appear in any more. Allison annoyed the hell out of me.

But first let me talk about what I do like in “Twisted.” From the opening chapter, the menace of the killer is evident. He’s a bad SOB which you chillingly convey without being too graphic. I admit I’m squeamish about that and I don’t like detours through a serial killer’s head. Instead of that you present the highlights of the crimes and use the aftermath of how it’s affected those left behind to freeze my bone marrow. The investigation of the most recent murder hasn’t been perfect and this adds to the plausibility factor. Crime is everywhere and the SMPD is as swamped as most police departments these days. The forensic labs are also choked with tests to run and despite better lines of communication, similarities between cases in different jurisdictions might go unnoticed until too late. Mark Wolfe is also stretched too thin trying to handle all the various cases he’s dealing with some of which you sketch in with enough details to make that believable without derailing the focus on the main plot.

As the task force gets in gear, it’s fascinating to get a bird’s eye view of the nuts and bolts of trying to solve this crime. Officers toss about ideas, work up possible leads, follow those through, reach roadblocks, get dead ended and refocus to approach the case from different angles. It’s like watching a riveting flow chart in action knowing the result at stake is death. The cool things that the people at the Delphi Center can do are the icing on the cake for my forensic geek fandom. Seeing all the work that has to go into outthinking and legally tracking this killer shows the dedication of the people involved as well as their frustration at being so close and still not having all the pieces needed to solve the puzzle.

The final few chapters are suspenseful. You ratchet tension well and generally have me on the edge of my seat as the action roars to a climax. Some of the details of the investigation end up not playing a part in getting the killer but every book about solving crimes needs a few red herrings. Allison does end up face to face with death, which I expected, but the way she gets there doesn’t follow the path I thought it would. I am pleased about that and yet also disappointed because the path you use highlights the two issues that don’t work for me – namely Allison and Mark.

Allison’s the only woman in the homicide department – indeed one of only four women on the force – and as a rookie detective constantly feels the need to prove herself. I can understand that. Law enforcement still seems to be a male bastion and Allison has only taken part in one major investigation. She’s eager to earn her place, improve her skills and become a better officer. Though by the way she acts in this story, she’s got a long way to go and if she’s not more careful, she’ll never live to achieve all that. Allison starts the book by making a major mistake that could have got her killed. She knows this and it gnaws at her that she did it and that Mark saves her bacon. Does it seem to be a learning experience for her? Surprisingly not.

Allison pushes her way into two cases not assigned to her and, to her credit, she does prove that the chief suspect in the most recent case couldn’t have committed the crime and that another case from a year ago is actually linked to the killer Mark’s been after. That opens the door to Mark’s theory and gets a task force in place which Allison then becomes a part of – though in reality it seems that by default and for lack of numbers every homicide detective on the force is on it. Allison knows that this guy is bad, that he’s killed at least six women and that they’re fighting to find him in time so yes, I can see her continuing to push to solve the crime but as the book progresses, Allison makes mistake after mistake.

Okay, I accept that she’s learning but she’s got an expert – Mark – on hand telling her not to do certain things yet Allison just busts past his advice and, in some cases, his orders and keeps barreling along. Oh no, she isn’t going to let up, she isn’t going to stop and think “Hmmm, here’s a seasoned veteran telling me to hold up or not do something. Maybe I should listen to him.” Instead she makes more mistakes. What does she do after one of them? She tries to cover it up so that she won’t look bad and take crap from her fellow officers who will then – justifiably in my opinion – be worried about having her cover their backs. I agree that it could unravel her career but maybe, just maybe, her flipping career does need to unravel before she gets herself or someone else killed.

People rise to the level of their incompetence but due to Mark going along with her pleas, Allison floats above hers and this time, she comes damn close to dying while another woman actually does. Here’s intrepid Allison, following up on a lead after spotting a clue that will lead her to where the killer is and does she call in that little fact? No, she calls in a license plate but fails to mention, “Oh and by the way I am at this location where I think a man who’s raped and murdered over six women might be.” Luckily for her she manages to survive the shit storm that follows.

Allison ends up not wowing me with her police skills but how about the romance? Does it help make up for the deficiencies I feel are in the suspense side of the book? Nope, ‘fraid not. Mark has a failed marriage behind him due to his diligence for his job. And for most of this book, he stays in diligent character. At first Allison seems to just want release from the tension of the case and when she finally gets Mark into bed, I’d swear that her primary feeling is one of satisfaction that she won their battle of wills. It’s way past the halfway point of the book yet I haven’t gotten a sense that anything deeper than scratching an itch is going on. Then suddenly! Allison is showing inklings of hope in her eyes and – after they chase down and arrest a suspect – she pulls Mark aside to try to delve into his feelings and get all emo. I sat with book in hand and jaw hanging open in disbelief. With a suspected killer in an interrogation room, this is not the time to attempt to help Mark deal with his chronic stress and avoid Burnoutville. Mark thinks that he feels he’s in the Twilight Zone and I feel that I’m right there with him. WTF?!

But, hold on. It seems that Allison’s questions about when Mark last took a vacation and her worry about his mental health have finally broken through to him. He jacks up going to a mandatory FBI meeting and instead stays in Texas for another night of hot lovin’. Only it appears to be just that, hot lovin’ but not love. Or not that I can see. And as the story races to a conclusion and the aftermath, honestly I still don’t see love. Lust yes, lots of that but when Allison and Mark tearfully offer each other their “I love you’s” on the last page, it doesn’t move me at all nor do I believe in its staying power. Maybe if they make appearances in future books I can be convinced but for now, the only reason I believe they’re holding hands and getting all dewy eyed is because you tell me they are.

And that is why I reluctantly give one of your books a D grade. Allison ends up being mostly a fail while Mark tumbles off into romantic faildom after keeping his head above the suspense waterline. Without the parts of the investigation that I liked and the way you still managed to make me want to keep reading, it would be lower than that. You’ve written many other good books which I would recommend for newbies to try but this one isn’t one of them.

~Jayne

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REVIEW: Hotter than Wildfire by Lisa Marie Rice

Jane — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:00:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Rice:

In the last series of books you wrote for Avon Red, the heroes were, well, of questionable heroic quality. I had some problems fully embracing those stories, although, in some sense, those anti hero stories gave me much greater food for thought. Hotter than Wildfire leaves the anti heroes behind and presents the second of three stories featuring three men who view each other as brothers, bound together by a frightful childhood and a single goal – save what women they could from abusive men.

Harry Bolt valued one thing in his early life and that was his sister, Crissy. As a child himself, Harry took what beatings he could, stole food, clothing, and even toys for his sister. Yet, one child is no match for an adult male and one night Harry is unable to protect his sister from being killed by the brute his mother had brought home.

As an adult Harry uses his skills and money to run Lost Ones Fund, an underground railroad of sorts that takes abused and battered women away from their abusers and gives them new identities and a new life somewhere far away. Each woman is given a card with a phone number that leads back to the PI agency that Harry and his two friends run. This card is supposed to be a secret but one of the women that they have helped recognizes the lost, scared look in the eyes of Ellen Palmer and passes on the number to her.

Ellen Palmer had a head for numbers. She got a job as the head of the accounts department right after she had finished college and obtained her CPA license. It was a job too extensive for a college graduate but just right for someone inexperienced because the company she was working for was doing bad things. By the time Ellen figured this out, it was too late. Her boss had a more than business like interest in her and she knew more than she should about a very bad man. Ellen goes on the run and into hiding. But she’s not very good at hiding because she enjoys singing as much as she enjoys numbers and based on some nightclub performances, Ellen becomes “Eve”, a hauntingly beautiful voice with no identity. Only the bad guy recognizes Eve’s voice (you don’t become a top bad guy without noticing things, paying attention to details) and this sets in motion the need for Ellen to seek out Harry and his Lost Ones service.

Harry has an instant connection with Ellen (this is standard LMR fare, just go with it). In part because Harry recognizes Ellen as Eve (see, she isn’t very good at hiding). Harry had to undergo excruciatingly painful recovery from injuries suffered in Afghanistan (also standard LMR fare).

As I was stating parenthetically, this is pretty standard LMR fare. Hero has instant woody near heroine. Heroine is in jeopardy. Bad guys are out to get them both. Hero and his team of good guys use a ton of technology to win the day (I swear LMR was writing about the iPhone before the iPhone came out). There is even a nod to Shannon McKenna in this book when LMR references a woman who was “a designer of jewelry that doubled as weaponry, only for women.”

The action scenes are so over the top, though, that it is hard to suspend disbelief at times, particularly the ending. The ending comes straight out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film complete with airplanes, rifles, grapple guns. The world inhabited by these characters has no basis in reality for the most part even though there are efforts to ground it in current events. There are disturbing privacy lines that are crossed by Harry into Ellen’s personal space. (It’s hard not to draw parallels between these stories and those of Shannon McKenna where the heroes are actual stalkers). As it is all done in the name of love, it’s excusable. But it won’t be palatable for every reader. Clearly, these are meant to be high octane fantasies.

There isn’t a ton of emotional movement for these characters either despite the dark places they come from, particularly Harry. For LMR fans, I think that this gives us what we often are looking for: the wounded hero who is obsessed with the heroine; the great internal guy monologue; the sexy love scenes; and the lonely heroine. The heroine is smart, but just doesn’t have the means to defend herself. But this is more of an action adventure romance than a character driven romance.

I would have enjoyed the story more having less access to the villain’s point of view. I’m not sure if those scenes serve a purpose. Perhaps they contributed to some suspense or urgency? I’m not certain. Finally, an advisory note. There are some gruesome scenes in the book, particularly relating to a woman (not the heroine). I waver between a B- and C+. I think it’s a B- for LMR fans and maybe a C+ for everyone else?

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Red Glove by Holly Black

Jia — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:20:31 +0000

Note: This review is going to be spoilery for White Cat because there’s no good way to discuss Red Glove without revealing the big secret of that book. Skim very selectively if you’re spoiler-phobic!

Dear Ms. Black,

Last year, you introduced us to the Curse Workers. In the Curse Worker world, magic was outlawed along with alcohol during the Prohibition era. And while the ban on alcohol was eventually repealed, the ban on magic was not. This resulted in the use of magic falling under the control of organized crime. Because curse working is a magic system based on touch, it also affected society in an interesting way: everyone wears gloves — even non-curse workers — and walking around without gloves on is scandalous and akin to walking around naked. I love little details like that!

In White Cat, Cassel Sharpe thought he was the only ordinary member of a family of curse workers: his grandfather can kill with a touch, his mother manipulates emotions, his brother can alter memories. But when you grow up in a family of con artists, you can’t help but pick up some of the tricks of the trade yourself.

Unfortunately, Cassel discovered the truth: he wasn’t the only normal guy in a family of curse workers. He was a curse worker like the rest of them, and his ability is one of the rarest — he can transform things into other objects. The reason why he didn’t know is because his own brothers were tampering with his memories in order to use him to commit crimes for their own benefit. Did I mention that his family is also a little dysfunctional? I mean, on top of being a family of con artists with ties to the mob.

Red Glove opens with Cassel coping with the fallout of White Cat. Readers may recall that his mother, as a misguided favor to him, made the love of his life, Lila, fall in love with him. This is tragic on many levels because Cassel has loved Lila since forever and now at last she reciprocates, but it’s not real and he knows it. It’s led to awkwardness between him and Lila, and resentment between him and his mother.

(There is a very uncomfortable scene between Cassel and his mother in the first chapter that made me cringe. Not because it was terrible in a quality sense, but terrible in an abusive sense. Readers sensitive to such content may need to brace themselves. It’s another sign of how dysfunctional Cassel’s family is and that his mother’s ability makes her emotional unstable in awful ways, but such scenes can be very hard to read so I wanted to warn.)

The situation with Lila is further complicated when she enrolls at his school. She knows about his mother’s curse and knows that her feelings for him are manufactured and false, but she hopes to ride out the curse by his side because to do otherwise is painful for her. It’s such a sticky spot for Cassel to be in.

To make matters worse, his oldest brother is murdered and the FBI seeks out his help to find the killer. Any good scam artist with mob ties knows that even being suspected of having ties to the Feds is the kiss of death. Cassel doesn’t want this kind of attention, but what can he do? The government knows his secret. But it’s not just the government who wants him. Lila’s father, a big-time mob boss, wants him to join the business. After all, Cassel’s grandfather worked for him. Why not Cassel himself?

But Cassel doesn’t want to join the Feds and he doesn’t want to join the mob. For so long he wished he was a curseworker like the rest of of his family but now that he actually is, he realizes he wants a normal life more. And for him to even have a chance at realizing it, he’ll have to find his brother’s murderer, even if he has to run the biggest scam of his life to accomplish it.

I really love a plot full of twists and turns. While there’s no big secret along the lines of the revelation from White Cat, the identity of the murderer still took me by surprise because up until the point where we get the major identifying clue, I honestly did think it was someone else. Mostly because the true identity of the killer seemed so obvious I figured it was a red herring. On the other hand, I felt the true identity might also have been a little neat and pat, making it so that it was overshadowed by other things going on in the book.

I also think Cassel’s the best kind of protagonist for this sort of plot because he’s smart and knows how to run a good scam. The problem is that he’s almost too good at what he does while also being a fundamentally good person, so the people he wants most to trust him don’t and the people he wants nothing to do with do.

The subplot involving Lila is very heart-wrenching. It’s the good kind of drama. Lila has always been out of Cassel’s reach by virtue of the fact that she’s a mob boss’s daughter while the most he can ever aspire to is work for her family. But now he finally has his chance except it’s not real. He’s tempted to succumb to the illusion, as temporary as it is, but then what will he do when his mother’s curse wears off? I think Cassel’s reaction to Lila’s false feelings for him, and how he handles it, highlights the very best of him as well as pushes his biggest weaknesses.

I also enjoyed the continuing subplot involving the rights of curseworkers and their continued fight for freedom and recognition. I thought it tied in nicely with the storyline involving Cassel’s friends, Sam and Daneca, and confirms some suspicions that were raised in White Cat.

Books like this remind me how much I love smart characters who are up against opponents who are just as smart as them, albeit in different ways. It feels evenly balanced, and I think it helps make the plot more exciting because in a world like this, you can’t be 100% sure Cassel will end up on top. It’s not for everyone but I love that uncertainty and I think so will anyone who loves a good con artist character. B+

My regards,
Jia

REVIEW: A Lot Like Love by Julie James

Jayne — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 10:00:41 +0000

Dear Ms. James,

I finally discovered you with the last book you wrote and got all excited when I noticed that Jane had already gotten your newest one, “A Lot Like Love” for us. Jane’s good about that. I can say that from the way I also enjoyed this one, it looks like we’re going to have a long and wonderful relationship. At least, I hope we will.

FBI agent Nick McCall senses Something Is Up when he gets called into his boss’s office but as long as he can get it done before flying out to New York for his mother’s “surprise” 60th birthday party, all will be good. Only when his boss starts sliding then twisting – and everyone knows twisting means bad – the sleeve on his Starbucks coffee, Nick braces himself. The deal is that Nick is supposed to use his undercover expertise to help the new guy, Huxley – who has sharper suits than Pallas’s partner, agent Wilkins, and who actually wears a sweater vest – with the case Huxley’s been working on for months namely to nail Xander Eckhart for money laundering.

They’ve got a plan to sneak bugs into Eckhart’s swanky restaurant to tape conversations between him and Roberto Martino’s people – all they need is an “in” to get them there. And the “in” is one hot Chicago socialite and wine store owner Jordan Rhodes. For the price of springing her twin brother Kyle, aka the “Twitter Terrorist” from jail 14 months early, Jordan will take Huxley with her to an exclusive wine tasting party during which the bugs will get planted.

Problem is, Huxley gets the flu and Nick gets the job of being Jordan’s date for the night. Since the two get along only about 18% of the time, it’ll be a test of Nick’s undercover skills and Jordan’s desire to see Kyle go free. And then things get worse when a jealous Eckhart puts a PI on Nick’s tail and the one night boyfriend act goes full time. Can Jordan and Nick keep the sarcastic quips to a minimum before morphing into not being able to keep their hands off each other long enough to close the case?

I liked a lot of things about this book. It’s funny, the plot isn’t over the top, Nick is such a guy and Jordan is more than strong enough to match him without being what I know a lot of readers don’t like – kickass. I also like that I can see the feelings growing between these two without Nick suddenly turning into an emo or Jordan becoming clingy. They remain the characters you start us out with even as they fall in love and we get to see them realize their attraction for each other, think about it, rearrange their new reality and act on it. Nick’s never going to enjoy “Dancing with the Stars” for itself and he’s always probably going to prefer bourbon to wine but hey, he can watch some sequins and spray tans if it gets him laid.

He’s also the man on the spot if a girl needs to have a slight breakdown after having a gun held to her head. But Jordan’s no wimp, as Nick points out to the men in her family, and she keeps her cool when it counts plus has a 10 foot tall sense of loyalty to those she loves. I love the way she doesn’t cut Nick any slack and remains fearless regardless of his “don’t fuck with me” face.

I do have some problems with the investigation side of the plot. Nick spouts off a lot of information about what’s just gone down before the investigation is closed and even tells Jordan a teensy bit about his next potential cases. Would this happen in real life? And while I’d love to believe that law enforcement could get his perfect cover into place within 24 hours, this is the government we’re talking about.

Still, I had a great time reading the book and loved watching yet another tough FBI agent meet his soul mate where he least expected her. Poor chief Davis must really fear he’s running a matchmaking agency rather than an FBI field office at this point. And though I’m excited about Jordan’s brother Kyle in the next book, when will we get Wilkin’s story? B

~Jayne

This book is published by an Agency publisher meaning that the publisher sets the digital book price and there are no discounts.

REVIEW: Truthful Change by Jane Davitt and Alexa Snow

SarahF — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:00:31 +0000

Dear Ms. Davitt and Ms. Snow.

I have previously enjoyed your novels, both those I’ve reviewed and those I haven’t. And I had this book in my review pile for a while. But…someone (can’t remember who, sorry) jumped it way up my list by saying how wonderful it was and I spent most of Thanksgiving engrossed in the characters you created.

First of all: what the hell is up with the title? It’s boring and misleading and just…well, boring. I mean, I don’t want The Ex-Mercenary’s Undercover Gardener or anything, but Truthful Change is lacking a certain creative energy that the story has in spades. And the cover’s pretty suckful too. Which one of those men is supposed to be Karl? Because neither of them is 37.

Anyway. Aiden is an FBI agent. The book opens with a Prologue in which he is blowing his doctor boyfriend, with whom he lives. Not all is well in Paradise, though. We next see Karl yelling at his gardener. Karl is a former mercenary, who sold his private military company (like Blackwater) after he was shot by a sniper. His rehabilitation has taken months, during which time he bought a house that needs landscaping. His gardener, Adam, is young and naive and hot and Karl soon comes on to him and they end up fucking. A lot.

Adam, of course, is really Aiden. Karl is being investigated by the FBI because the person he sold his PMC to is going rogue and the FBI wants to know if Karl is involved in or masterminding the violence and/or if he’ll testify against the current owner of the company. But this is where this book might hit many people’s squick buttons. Aiden has sex with Karl as Adam. He actually thinks at one point:

He loved his partner Scott. Loved him and would never cheat on him. This didn’t count; it was for work, and it wasn’t like Aiden had wanted it. Hell, on the one hand, it was almost possible to convince himself that he wasn’t even the one who’d been fucked by Blake. That had been Adam Marshall, after all. The only thing Aiden Russell had done that day was go to work. That his job had required he stand with his pants around his ankles was irrelevant. Besides, Blake had worn a condom. It’d been safe. That was all that mattered, and Scott never had to know about it.

Sure, he’s working hard to convince himself here, but still…this might be a problem for some readers. It’s only when his emotions get involved that he starts to feel guilty about it. *I* thought the slow movement into love and the hints about Aiden’s relationship with Scott going sour were well-done enough to work. But I have more…let’s just say, more liberal opinions when it comes to cheating than many romance readers. The inevitable break-up with Scott is dealt with in slightly deus ex machina fashion to make us sympathetic to all concerned, but Aiden does cheat on his partner, he does acknowledge that he’s cheating, and he feels guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop. Readers, do with that what you will.

This issue aside, this story is told from the alternating third person deep point of view of both Aiden and Karl. You do a great job of showing Aiden falling for Karl and Karl falling for both Adam and later, after the reveal just more than halfway through, Aiden. What gets to Aiden, what makes him cheat on Scott emotionally, is how well Karl jumps on all his sexual buttons. Karl is a top and Aiden is a bottom. Both of them like sex hard and fast, pushing boundaries, and slightly painful. I wouldn’t say this book tips over into full-on BDSM at any point. But there is a strong power dynamic during the sex scenes that both Aiden and Karl revel in. Their sexual compatibility draws the men together, but they discover that they get along well in other aspects of life, too. And, oh my stars and garters, the sex is hot:

Three fingers hurt, but Karl’s mouth was open, waiting, and Aiden arched his hips obediently, pushing inside it, then pulled back to grind helplessly against the fingers inside him because as much as he wanted the wet heat of Karl’s mouth, he needed the burn in his ass more. It scratched every itch he had to be filled so painfully, to be so perfectly possessed. Even if two of the fingers were his, they were moving at Karl’s command, back and forth, pushing deeper.

Karl let Aiden’s cock rub against his cheek, leaving it damp. The sun was rising now, light sifting into the room through a window whose curtains were only half-drawn. "Still feel good?" Karl asked, his finger working in and out slowly. Aiden could feel it rub against his fingers, and the knowledge of what they were doing together sent a shudder through him, shame and lust competing for supremacy.

God, it hurt and it felt so good, and after a sex life in which he’d usually been the one in control, being Karl’s puppet felt shockingly right. He didn’t want it to stop. He let himself fuck Karl’s mouth with a lazy abandon that was like drifting, floating, and for one incredible moment, he didn’t care if he ever came. He just wanted to stop time right then and there.

I liked how you have Karl deal with the revelation of Aiden’s real job. He’s pissed that he’s been played. He’s worried he’s losing his edge. He’s confused about the difference between Adam and Aiden. And he has to learn to like Aiden more than he liked Adam. He’s in lust with Adam, but he falls in love with Aiden. But he’s not stupid about the “betrayal” of what Aiden did. Karl is pragmatic and once he gets passed his initial outrage, he understands Aiden’s position and even appreciates how well Aiden did his job. And I also love how, when they’re on a stake-out together, they don’t have sex all over the place. They’re working, so…they work.

But this is actually a problem with the narrative arc. The first two-thirds of the book are intense. Adam/Aiden and Karl have a lot of hardcore sex and it’s brilliantly described and very very hot. Aiden has his job and it creates the suspense of when Karl will figure things out and how he’ll deal with it. Once Karl does figure things out, there’s the emotional entanglements and suspense of his reaction. But once they’ve settled into the resolution of the suspense plot of the novel (bringing down the guy who bought Karl’s company), the novel itself loses some of its intensity, precisely because Aiden and Karl act like professionals and don’t fuck like bunnies while on the job. But I did appreciate Karl having to figure out how to treat Aiden, the more mature, educated professional, differently from the way he treated and protected Adam, his young, uneducated gardener.

So while the tension felt off during the final third of the book, the fact that these characters are so well-built, so internally consistent, so real, and the fact that they actually acted like people who are good at their jobs almost made up for it.

Readers: if you can deal with the cheating and want a truly character-driven story that’s extremely well-written, you can’t do much better than this book, ridiculous title and cover or no.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Kindle | Borders
| Sony| Loose Id

REVIEW: Unspeakable by Laura Griffin

Jayne — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:00:55 +0000

Dear Ms. Griffin,

You are my go-to author for thrillers and romantic suspense. “Unspeakable” is taut, hot, had me glued to it for the last 100 pages and is on my rec list for July releases.

Elaina McCord doesn’t want to be working in the FBI office in Brownsville, Texas but that’s where she was sent after finishing her training at Quantico and that’s where she finds herself dealing with the usual macho bullshit from her male colleagues: they either ignore her, hit on her or talk down to her. But her assignment to a murder investigation on Lito Island is the break she’s been waiting for and she’s not going to give in to her frustration. Except that her reception by the local cops isn’t encouraging and the most acceptance she finds is from true crime author Troy Stockton.

Elaina begins working the case, offering her suggestions – which are usually ignored, and being annoyed that where ever she turns, Stockton seems to already be there. Since bodies are piling up and a few cold cases are being tentatively linked to their unsub, Elaina won’t turn down his help – and he’s sure easy on the eyes – but she doesn’t want to risk anything she says showing up in his next best selling book.

The ease with which the killer gets access to his victims and disposes of the cut up bodies is maddening. There’s something they’re missing and it’s right under their noses. But no one realizes what it is until Elaina notices something and begins talking to someone in the cybercrimes unit at the Delphi Center. Will they unravel the mysteries before the killer strikes again or will Elaina be his next victim?

In your Acknowledgments, you mention how many people helped you to get the details and feel for the police work correct. Please thank them for me as once again it all seems so real to me. There’s the tireless slogging through old case files, the determination of a homicide detective to solve a case even if it’s five years old and there’s almost no evidence, the helplessness felt by officers as they break the news to another grief stricken family that their daughter’s remains were just found, and the cold, hard fury that drives them to find this monster who enjoys eviscerating women.

I enjoyed reading about Elaina. She’s human and makes mistakes. And I think that a lot of women could identify with her as she works to prove herself in a male dominated field. She’s also intelligent, hard working, notices the little things which when strung together can lead to a break in the hard cases. I applaud her decision in the end because she makes it not to prove something to someone else but because she feels it’s the best thing to advance her career. Oh, and despite her actions in Matamoros at least she doesn’t offer herself stupidly as bait to the Texas killer. That was a sweet surprise.

Elaina’s theory about the unsub’s first victim from ten years ago blows one of Troy’s novels, which was based partly on that case, straight out of the water – which pisses him off. But not because Elaina’s right – Troy has too much respect for the fact that she caught this connection. Instead it makes him want to help in any way he can to get the SOB who did do the crime. I kind of wondered throughout the book if Elaina and Troy’s relationship wasn’t skating the fine line of Elaina’s professionalism. But I did like watching Troy have to work to earn Elaina’s respect and to reel in this tough woman who doesn’t do “girly.” I love the scene where she whips out her Glock and tells him to stay back while she checks something out. That put him in his place.

I like a lot of the secondary characters including the couple being set up for the next book. Kudos for having their presence in this book be related to the crimes being solved and not just place holding until their time on center stage. Weaver is a great partner with wonderful lines and I would love to see something for him in the future.

If Weaver was surprised to find Troy out here leaning against his car, he didn’t show it. He stopped beside the battered Taurus and pulled out his keys.
“Hey, I think you dinged my car,” he said.
Troy scowled at the sedan. It was a heap, just like Elaina’s. “I can’t believe you guys drive these things.”
“We took a vow of poverty. What can I do for you, Mr. Stockton?”
“Troy. And you know exactly what you can do for me.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Weaver said.
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, I know exactly where she is, but I’m not going to tell you.”

Ronnie, the ass shooting mother, is fabulous in her one scene and Chico is a solid law officer through the whole book.

Troy and Elaina work well together and eventually play well together. If you know what I mean. And even though the “I love yous” don’t arrive – even in their minds – until very late in the game, it’s obvious that they’re getting under the other’s skin. I also like that they can laugh with and sometimes at each other.

He went inside the house to get another glass. When he came back out, he poured some tequila and slid it in front of her, then sank into his chair, facing the water.
She lifted her glass and looked at the amber liquid.
“It’s from Jalisco,” he told her, and then watched in amazement as she tipped her head back and poured it down her throat.
“Well, shit, that’s one way to do it.”
Her eyes slammed shut. She bent over and made a sound like a gagging cat.
“Laina?” He pounded her back. “Hey, you okay?”
She shook her head vigorously, and he couldn’t help it – he started to laugh.
Her head snapped up and she wheezed something at him.
“You’re supposed to sip it, not shoot it. This stuff’s three hundred bucks a bottle.”
She winced and shuddered, and he tried to soothe her by stroking her back.
“It’s awful,” she gasped.
“You just have to get used to it.”
“Why would you want to?”

This time the killer is another sick fuck. I have to wonder where you rom-susp authors get your ideas. Hopefully from some crime site and not from your own fertile imaginations. Just kidding! Anyway, I kept waiting to hear the way he got his victims to open their doors and let him get at them. And the way you describe is so devilishly fiendish and clever that I hope no one ever tries it because I’d be willing to bet it would work – all too well. When I said I didn’t put the book down for the last 100 pages, I meant it. And the final chase scene kept me riveted.

An unputdownable book is a wonderful thing to find. An author who can make my heart race at the possible fate of a victim yet keep from grossing me out with too vivid details is someone I look forward to reading again. And the excerpt from the next book makes me want to be able to read it already and not have to wait. Good deal all around.

~Jayne

REVIEW: Along Came a Husband by Helen Brenna

Jane — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:00:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Brenna:

Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are the ones about books that are totally competent yet somehow failed to reach me as a reader and this is one of those reviews. The writing was competent. There was a sense of urgency that kept the story moving. The core of the book centered around reunited lovers with a dash of marriage in trouble – both tropes that I dearly love. The characters had reasonable justifications for their actions but I guess, in the end, I found them fairly emotionally immature and not ready for a life together.

Missy Charms runs a gift shop on Mirabelle Island. One stormy night she opens her door to find a man with a gunshot wound. He turns out to be her supposedly dead husband, Jonas Abel. Jonas and Missy met and married quickly and then repented nearly every day thereafter. Jonas, an FBI agent, spent most of his waking time working and spent very little time with Missy. Missy felt abandoned and sought to fill the gap by working outside the home. Jonas had a deep seeded insecurity about providing for Missy and her job hunting fed that insecurity. At a very low point in her life, Missy needed Jonas and he was working and so she decided to leave him.

Jonas took the rejection hard and agreed to go deep undercover for the FBI, faking his death and disappearing for four years only to show up wounded at Missy’s home in Mirabelle. Together again, Jonas and Missy begin to question their separation and the fact that in the four year absence neither has found another to love.

The characters are thoughtfully developed. Their actions in keeping with the identities created for them, yet, the images that they both projected were those who were very childish. Jonas is surprised that Missy mourned him. I found this rather incredible because even if you divorce it doesn’t mean you don’t care for that person anymore. Jonas acted quite precipitously in faking his own death and completely removing himself from Missy’s life.

Unfortunately, his cover is blown and his life is in danger and he’s not sure who to trust. His superiors at the FBI might be dirty and Jonas flees to one place where he thinks no one can find him.

Part of Jonas’ insecurity was based on the fact that Missy lied to him when they met and kept a fairly significant fact of her past from him until only shortly before their marriage. There were real and serious issues that separated Jonas and Missy and I thought you did a great job of conveying those. I was less convinced that either Jonas or Missy had learned or grown from their mistakes. There really wasn’t any internal recognition of what went wrong in their marriage. Rather than being insightful, Missy and Jonas both had to be told by someone else what was wrong with their marriage. It seemed like a deux ex machina, in fact. I would have liked to see Missy or Jonas recognize in their time apart what had gone wrong with their marriage and how to fix it.

I guess in the end, I found Jonas and Missy quite juveline in their actions at the end of the book marked the beginning of their maturation rather than the end of it. Jonas just started to awaken that perhaps it was his own self esteem issues and neanderthal mindset that contributed to Missy’s unhappiness. Missy began to realize that her selfishness had inflicted quite a bit of hurt on those around her. Yet even when faced with a few home truths, neither Jonas nor Missy really did anything with that knowledge. And by that I mean, that I didn’t feel like either of them learned anything until the end, nothing in the four tyears that separated them and I didn’t have confidence that this was a couple that would be able to hold it together during a crisis.

The ending wraps everything up neatly with all the previous issues swept aside as if both Jonas and Missy had suddenly become adults yet I never saw the process only the end result. I felt like you did a great job showing the flaws in the characters but I didn’t feel like they learned or grew. C+

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Something About You by Julie James

Janine — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:00:44 +0000

Dear Ms. James,

Something About You begins with a hilarious scene in which Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde, wanting nothing more than a little sleep, overhears some raunchy sex from the hotel room next door to her own.

“Such a big, bad man! Right there, oh yeah-’right there, don't stop!”

The pillow over her heard did nothing to drown out the woman's voice. Cameron closed her eyes in a silent plea. Dear Mr. Big and Bad: Whatever the hell you're doing, don't you move from that spot until you get the job done. She hadn't prayed so hard for an orgasm since the first-’and last-’time she'd slept with Jim, the corporate wine buyer/artist who wanted to “find his way” but who didn't seem to have a clue how to find his way around the key parts of the female body.

What happens shortly afterward though, is no laughing matter. Cameron is awakened by the sound of the bed being slammed against the wall. She calls the hotel’s front desk to send someone to ask the couple next door to be quiet, and watches through the peephole to see, from the back only, a man in a hooded T-shirt leaving the neighboring room. Soon after that, hotel security guards arrive and discover a dead woman's body in the same room. What Cameron overheard was a murder.

The dead woman is a prostitute named Mandy Robards and a video camera found at the scene proves that Mandy recorded her encounters with an important client-’none other than a United States senator. It's not clear who killed Mandy or why, but due to the senator's involvement the FBI is brought in.

Two FBI agents arrive on the scene to question Cameron, and to her disbelief, one of them is Jack Pallas-’the same Jack Pallas who blames her for the fact that a case he risked his life working on was never brought to trial.

Three years earlier, Jack and Cameron worked together to bring mobster Roberto Martino to justice. Jack had spent the two years before that undercover in Martino's organization, until his cover was blown through no fault of his own. Jack barely escaped with his life, and wanted nothing more than to see justice served.

So did Cameron, who joined the U.S. Attorney's office after her father, a police officer, was gunned down in the line of duty. But Cameron's boss, U.S. Attorney Silas Briggs, decided not to prosecute and ordered her to break the news to Jack without telling him who made the decision.

Cameron, new to her position, felt she had to play ball, so when she broke the news to Jack, she told him it was she who'd decided not to bring charges against Martino. A furious Jack made some disparaging comments about Cameron to the media, and was preparing to apologize when he saw her coming out of his supervisor's office and learned that he was being transferred to Nebraska.

Now Jack is back from Nebraska and he has not forgiven Cameron for the bad decision he believes she made-’or for having him sent out of state in the wake of his unkind remarks to the press. But despite this, when Jack realizes that Cameron is all that stands between a U.S. senator and murder charges, and that the real killer is still at large and a danger to Cameron, he is determined to protect her.

While spending time questioning Cameron and seeing to her protection, Jack begins to have difficulty maintaining his animosity toward her. His partner, Wilkins, teases him about his jealousy and curiosity where Cameron is concerned.

Cameron, meanwhile, has never forgotten how much she liked and respected Jack before their falling out. And though her closest friends, Amy and Collin, are still angry with Jack for his public disparaging of Cameron three years before, Cameron herself is more forgiving.

But how can Jack and Cameron act on their attraction when Jack believes that Cameron decided against bringing to justice the mobster he worked so hard to take down? And what will happen when Mandy Robards' killer discovers that Cameron witnessed his escape from the scene of the crime?

Something About You is a charming, entertaining blend of romantic comedy and romantic suspense. It's not a whodunit, since we learn the killer's identity in the fourth chapter. Instead, it's a lighter story where the murder investigation serves as the way to throw two smart and lovable people together.

In her A- review, Jayne noted how much she appreciated the hero and heroine's intelligent behavior. I felt the same way. One thing that makes the romance convincing in this book is that it's founded on mutual respect and admiration; even from where they start off, with a big disagreement between them, it's clear that Cameron and Jack think highly of one another, and easy to understand why.

You have a gift for writing endearing characters. I love that although Cameron is successful and beautiful, she still has an underlying vulnerability that makes her easy to relate to. She also comes across as smart and capable, and it is evident why Jack begins to like her again even when he is reluctant to do so.

As for Jack, he too is easy to admire since he cares so much about his job and takes no chances with Cameron's safety even when he has a grudge against her.

The dialogue in this book really sparkles; not just the repartee between Cameron and Jack but also the banter between Jack, his partner, Sam Wilkins, and the Chicago Police Department officers guarding Cameron.

And speaking of secondary characters, Wilkins was adorable and I hope to see more of him and his teasing sense of humor in the future. Collin, Cameron's gay friend, was also a very lovable character. I appreciated that he didn't fit the stereotype and I loved the story of how he and Cameron became friends.

I thought the last third of the book, although still enjoyable, wasn’t quite as compelling as the first two thirds. The internal conflict (Jack believing that Cameron shut down the mob case) was resolved partway through the book and after that, there was only the external conflict with the killer, which made some of the romantic and sexual tension peter out early. The sex scenes, therefore, didn't fully hold my attention.

Also, I liked that this book had more introspection on the part of the characters than Practice Makes Perfect but I would have loved to have even more. For example, at one point Jack compares himself to Mandy Robards, the murdered prostitute, thinking that they both had jobs that required detachment. I really liked that and hoped that this would lead to more insight into Jack but instead it turned into a segue for him to think about how Cameron, unlike everyone else, gets under his skin, which is nothing new in romance.

And as long as I’m nitpicking, I thought there were some improbable happenings in this book. All of them involved the police or the FBI:

First, the fact that the cops and FBI agents in the story became aware of Jack and Cameron's romantic involvement made the situation feel a bit fantastical. Had Cameron and Jack kept their relationship secret, I would have found it more believable that Jack would remain assigned to the case in which Cameron was the witness.

Second, I thought it was a little far-fetched when Jack replaced Cameron's police protection. I can’t believe that only one agent would be guarding such an important witness around the clock (even when he needed to sleep) without any backup. It felt like a contrivance to give Jack and Cameron privacy.

A third thing that struck me as out of character for the FBI was that they did not investigate the prostitute’s video camera, which was bought at a store that sold spying equipment. I expect that even in a city the size of Chicago there wouldn't be many places that sell such equipment. Tracking down that store's customer list could have provided a clue about the killer's identity.

Despite this and despite a couple of other blunders the FBI and police made, I still felt Something About You was better-researched and more plausible than many contemporaries I read. Details like the heroine having a real career, being a child of divorced parents, having a sexual past that was a non-issue in the story, and the use of contemporary technology by various characters, all made this story feel current. The characters never felt like they were stuck in a time warp; this is a contemporary that actually feels contemporary.

Something else I enjoyed was the clever way you handled what a friend of mine calls “mental lusting.” Lust is a staple of romances and for this reason, it often feels clichéd, but here it felt fresh and funny, because of the way you used it to generate humor.

One example of that is this excerpt from a scene in which Cameron, riding behind Jack on his motorcycle, unconsciously slips into a fantasy and is brought up short when the ride ends.

They were just getting to the good part in her head–in her mind she had revised the scene from the other day when Jack and Wilkins came by to tell her about the surveillance, only this time it was only her and Jack (no clue how he actually got inside her house, useless details) and this time she had just stepped out of the shower (with perfect makeup and hair, of course) and he was waiting in her bedroom (an act that would be stalker-ish in real life but was necessary to advance the storyline) and he said some sly bit about was she going to be a cooperative witness and she said something equally sly back (she hadn’t come up with the exact line yet but at this point the dialogue became superfluous) and then she dropped her towel to the floor and walked over and without saying anything else they tumbled onto the bed and–

Pulled in front of her house.

In a recent discussion on Twitter Robin said that the difference between a C+ and a B- is whether a book is written with flair. Despite its aforementioned flaws, Something About You has flair in spades and for this reason I give it a strong B.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Sony | Kobo

This is published by Berkley, one of the Agency 5, but is pre-April 1 release and thus available at Amazon.

REVIEW: Shades of Gray by Brooke McKinley

SarahF — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:00:54 +0000

Dear Ms. McKinley.

Your book was another one recommended to me by Denise Rossetti. Because I loved the first one she recommended so much, I thought I’d try this one too. And boy, I’m glad I did.

This book has a very similar storyline to Zero at the Bone: two men navigate protective custody because one has witnessed something that could put away a very bad man for a very long time. As they spend time together, they fall in love. Despite the surface similarities, however, the stories are very different. In Shades of Gray, Danny Butler is a drug runner, working for a drug kingpin. He’s finally been caught by the cops on a weapons charge and Miller Sutton, FBI agent, manipulates Danny into witnessing against his boss. While in protective custody with Miller acting as Danny’s babysitter, they fall in love.

Unlike Zero at the Bone, this book isn’t a suspense book. There’s a couple of twists at the end that are brilliantly done, but almost all of the page space is given over to the relationship between the two men. The plot is there, it’s important, it’s beautifully written and pretty-much hole-less, as far as I can tell, but it’s secondary to the relationship. But the problem with this review is that I really can’t talk about that relationship without giving away unacceptable amounts of the plot. That said, however, you don’t hold back on how much these two men each have to compromise their own deeply held beliefs in order to save each other and be together. Miller has to overcome 30 years of denial over being gay and has to either lose or overcome (depending on how you look at it) his FBI “everything is black or white” mindset:

As a novice, Miller had assumed criminals were different in all ways from the average law-abiding citizen. But over time he had come to realize that drug dealers, murderers, and gang leaders all had people they loved, people they would do almost anything to protect, the same way the successful business man or suburban mom next door looked after their own. Involvement in the criminal world didn't necessarily erase those basic emotions of loyalty and love. It sometimes made Miller uneasy, the knowledge that in fundamental ways men like Danny were more similar to him than they were different. For Miller,
life worked better when the lines didn't blur.

Danny has to cut himself some slack, and see the good in himself. These are equally hard things for these men to do.

I also love how the narrative itself is all about the “shades of gray” that Miller has to embrace. Danny is terrified of his boss, but loves him, fears him, but is always looking for his approval, recognizes that he’s a Bad Man but doesn’t want to testify against him because of his deeply-felt loyalty to him. The justice system Miller believes in fails him at the end, as he himself does, too, and he has to figure out how to live with himself after that.

Not only are these characters perfectly consistent in their characterization throughout the novel, their changes are also consistent. That is, the narrative consistency of their characters is upheld even through the character growth and maturation they undergo, something that can be extremely difficult to pull off. And as this book was mostly about the characters figuring out how to be better people, both together and apart, in order to deserve each other, this consistency of characterization was vital to the quality of the book.

I think I’m failing miserably to say how damn GOOD this book was. I love romances that are primarily character driven and this one is so — I’m sorry, but I have to swear — abso-fucking-lutely perfect. These men have been through hell before their story starts, they go through hell during the book, they put *each other* through hell emotionally, and find themselves irrevocably different at the end of the book, wiser, all illusions shattered, all emotional disguises stripped, unable to be other than perfectly honest with themselves and with each other. I also like a lot of angst in my romance and you deliver perfectly. I like some grovel to my ending as well, and the Affair to Remember quality to the ending is perfect for drawn-out grovel from both characters.

Your writing never once tripped me up. The sex scenes are perfect. I liked the flashbacks, although occasionally they were slightly repetitious. I really can’t find anything wrong with this book at all. Angsty, romantic, hot, brilliant, and just plain GOOD. Thank you.

Grade: A

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

P.S. You really need a webpage. Like, really. How can an author today not have any sort of webpage at all?

REVIEW: Something About You by Julie James

Jayne — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:00:38 +0000

Dear Ms. James,

How do I like this book? Let me count the ways. I do like contemporaries and even the occasional romantic suspense but rarely do they combine as well as you’ve done with “Something About You.” And wow, even the cover model kinda looks like she’s wearing the dress you described. And how often does that happen?!

I’m going to be mega lazy after a hard day at work and just borrow your blurb.

FATE HAS THROWN TWO SWORN ENEMIES. . .

Of all the hotel rooms rented by all the adulterous politicians in Chicago, female Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde had to choose the one next to 1308, where some hot-and-heavy lovemaking ends in bloodshed. And of all the FBI agents in Illinois, it had to be Special Agent Jack Pallas who gets assigned to this high-profile homicide. The same Jack Pallas who still blames Cameron for a botched crackdown three years ago-’and nearly ruining his career-

. . .INTO EACH OTHER'S ARMS

Work with Cameron Lynde? Are they kidding? Maybe, Jack thinks, this is some kind of welcome-back prank after his stint away from Chicago. But it's no joke: the pair is going to have to put their rocky past behind them and focus on the case at hand. That is, if they can cut back on the razor-sharp jibes-’and smother the flame of their sizzling-hot sexual tension-

Jane said the book was good but she didn’t say how good. It’s great. Lessee, a heroine who is smart, acts smart and when she’s told she needs to be under protective custody, she doesn’t fight it with the same old stupid plotting I’ve seen with this kind of novel. She doesn’t think it’s fun to escape her police escort, she agrees to have them come along for a bridal party at a nightclub and ends up telling them all about her friends and the wedding she’s going to be in. They like her and she likes them. She’s good at her job and follows her professional principles even when she has to come to Jack’s rescue. And even after he loses control and tells the world she had her head up her ass during a previous case. Bliss.

And then there’s the hero who is portrayed as being as sinfully delicious as a double fudge chocolate cake with chocolate chips on top. And whipped cream. Jack’s initially not thrilled to have Cameron back in his life – just as she’s not too thrilled with him, but he takes her protection and her involvement in the case seriously and treats her with professionalism. He explains why she needs to be under protective custody instead of just strong arming her then he’s willing to protect her at any cost. Bliss, bliss.

The dialogue is fantastic. Smart, snappy, funny yet realistic. I can’t count the number of times I laughed while reading the book. The scene of the two CPD officers and the two FBI men talking about Cameron’s dating life is a sceam.

"So- for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde's surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?"

"Nope, you got it right," Kamin said. "We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym."

"Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her."

Kamin waved this off. "It's cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?"

"A switcheroo- right. Remind me again how that works?" Jack asked.

"It's because she's got this big date tonight," Kamin explained.

Jack cocked his head. "A date?"

Phelps chimed in. "Yeah, you know-’with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator."

"I must've missed that one."

"Oh, it's a great story," Kamin assured him. "She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes."

"Ah- the Meet Cute," Wilkins said with a grin.

Jack threw him a sharp look. "What did you just say?"

"You know, the Meet Cute." Wilkins explained. "In romantic comedies, that's what they call the moment when the man and woman ï¬rst meet." He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. "I don't know, Jack- if she's had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you."

Then, there’s when they’re standing outside Cameron’s house and exchanging information, and awe, at the bachelorette party game going on inside.

"What do you think the pink bags are for?" Wilkins asked. His voice was ï¬lled with wonder.

Phelps stood next to him, similarly wide-eyed and awestruck. "It's a game. Each girl buys a pair of underwear, something she would normally wear herself. The bride has to guess who brought which pair. If the bride guesses wrong, she has to do a shot. If she guesses right, the other girl drinks."

"Cameron was afraid Amy would think the game was tacky, but the cousins insisted, see?" Kamin said.

Jack glanced over. "You guys sure are getting into all this."

Phelps grinned. "When a girl like Cameron talks about underwear, you listen."

"How about you, Jack? Could you do it?" Wilkins asked.

"Do what?"

"Twenty pairs of underwear. Think you could ï¬gure out which pair belongs to Cameron?"

Jack had been interrogated at knife-point, gun-point, pretty much at all-points a man could think of, but hell if a question had ever made him squirm as much as that one.

Because now he was thinking about her underwear.

"I don't see why I'd have any particular insight into that," he answered grufï¬‚y. "Think you could ï¬gure it out?"

"No, but I didn't try to kiss her three nights ago," Wilkins said.

Jack glared at Kamin and Phelps. "You two tell all sorts of tales, don't you?" He nodded to Wilkins. "We should get going."

Wilkins shook his head. "No way. We came to show Cameron those photographs, and that's what we're going to do."

Jack pointed to the house. "You can't seriously be thinking about going in there."

Wilkins's eyes sparkled with excitement. "Oh, I'm going in all right. And you are, too, partner."

"You thought that going into a purse was sacrosanct? Inï¬ltrating a bachelorette party is way beyond that."

Wilkins rubbed his hands together eagerly. "I know. And I'll never have an excuse like this again."

"You're an FBI agent, Sam," Jack reminded him.

"I'm also a single man, Jack. And inside that house are twenty gorgeous women who are drinking and showing off their panties. It's a no-brainer." He pushed off the car and headed toward the house.

The heroine’s Gay best friend isn’t a stereotypical Gay Best Friend. Thank you for no mention of “Project Runway,” interior decorating (at least in relation to Collin), or squeally moments. The plot just seemed to flow and I didn’t notice your authorial hand jerking the characters’ strings to get them to move as you want them to. Bliss, bliss, bliss.

The villain isn’t a serial killer! So his POV of course doesn’t lovingly detail how much he likes to kill people. Sure, he did commit murder and does need to go down, but I can almost understand the situation in which he found himself and what made him kill. What’s the saying? Everyone could kill under the right circumstances. Then he stays a professional and methodically tries to cover his tracks. It was almost fun to watch him delve into why the crime didn’t have the outcome he’d expected. Still blissful.

Let me mention again how much I enjoy watching Cameron and Jack work this case. Despite a rocky start…

Before he could call her bluff, Cameron grabbed her purse and headed for the door. The hell with her stuff, she'd get it later. "It was nice catching up with you, Agent Pallas. I'm glad to see those three years in Nebraska didn't make you any less of an asshole."

She threw open the door and nearly ran into a man standing in the doorway. He wore a well-cut gray suit and tie, appeared younger than Jack, and was African American.

He ï¬‚ashed Cameron a knock-out smile while precariously balancing three Starbucks cups in his hands. "Thanks for getting the door. What'd I miss?"

"I'm storming out. And I just called Agent Pallas an asshole."

"Sounds like good times. Coffee?" He held the Starbucks out to her. "I'm Agent Wilkins."

…they quickly start meshing together. They listen to each other, respect each other professionally – now, mull over the other person’s ideas and suggestions and when someone higher on the food chain than the killer is contemplated, there’s no immediate dismissal that “this couldn’t possibly be right.” Cameron does do one slightly silly thing which no one would think might bring a killer to her house one day and because she didn’t go out once and try and track down and bring in the killer, I’ll forgive it. She also ends up doing something Jack calls “fucking brilliant” to aid in capturing the killer. I’m almost in a haze of bliss.

I did end up marking the book down slightly because I just felt the ending kept on going and going. The last chapter felt tacked on and was somewhat of an anticlimax but other than that, this is one book I can totally recommend. A-

~Jayne

This book is the subject of a new Save the Contemporary campaign. Come back tomorrow to hear about the details to win a new iTouch and a bottle of Stags’ Leap Petit Syrah which is a wine featured in the book.

REVIEW: Black at Heart by Leslie Parrish

Jayne — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:00:07 +0000

Dear Ms. Parrish,

Finally book three of the Black Cats series about a special FBI section which deals with crimes committed over the Internet. I wasn’t too sure how it would work for me since the person I assumed would be the heroine hadn’t impressed me much as a secondary character in “Fade to Black” or “Pitch Black.” Now having read it, I can say that though she improved somewhat there were other elements of the story which didn’t work for me.

Wyatt Blackstone is furious when an FBI stakeout goes horribly wrong. Two agents were killed and the suspect not apprehended but what makes it worse for Blackstone is that one of the agents is his and should never have been there in the first place. Lily Fletcher was no field agent. Her specialty was IT work for his own team but she’d been lured into working on another case on her own time by the chance to put a pedophile behind bars. And now she’s dead. Or….is she?

When Blackstone gets a phone call on the night of Lily’s funeral, he almost doesn’t believe the voice he hears. A quick decision later and another team member is with him hunting for a woman thought dead. Lily almost is dead after a week with a madman who takes his rage out on her and it takes her two months before she can leave the hospital. When she does, she starts a months long stay at a remote home owned by Blackstone where she strengthens her body and mind.

But after seven months, the killer is frantic to determine if Lily managed to survive her escape and begins a series of murders carefully crafted to implicate her. When that doesn’t work, a respected lawyer is hired to review the court trial of the man convicted of killing Lily’s nephew. When he’s released, Lily knows she must reappear in order to testify at a new trial – if there is one. Can she survive two people looking to silence her?

I was happy that Lily doesn’t act like a frightened rabbit anymore. She’s been through a life altering experience and it shows. She’s tougher mentally and physically though the nightmares will probably haunt her for a long time. What I really like about her now is that
she truly has changed. While she’s not “I am Woman, hear me roar!” she is ready to help in any way to make sure these two people get what’s coming to them.

After all the hints dropped about Wyatt’s childhood, I could just feel wounded angst scene coming on. He’s dark, he’s contained and in most other books, simpering sweet Lily would pour balm on his shriveled soul and heal him. Only Lily isn’t a simpering butterfly anymore and though Wyatt has scars from his distant past, he doesn’t wallow in them or use them as an excuse. Now that was a relief. Wyatt’s issues are with what he did as a whistle blower at the agency and how that impacted the cases against several vicious criminals. This makes sense to me as Wyatt doesn’t seem the kind of man to pull the “I had a terrible childhood” card to excuse his actions.

You’ve shown us Lily mooning over Wyatt for two books now and finally we get some action between the two. But given the way this book starts and Lily’s seeming frame of mind about Wyatt now unlike then, it’s almost too fast. I found myself skimming their love scene and mentally urging the book to get back to finding the killer.

As for the suspense part, for a lot of the book, you had me upside down and twisted around. I thought you did one thing at the halfway point and then you flipped that assumption on its head. The manner in which the killer goes about smoking Lily out is smart but when all is said and done I began to have questions. I wasn’t convinced that this person could have killed several people to implicate Lily in their murders. And the final suspense scene included a lot of elements I don’t like including the killer foaming at the mouth and doing a final “tell all” rundown of the crimes and reasons behind them. However, worst of all, Lily does a few TSTL things that facilitate her near death like leaving a door unlocked. That was a WTF? moment of stupidity for me.

Even though this book didn’t live up to the heights of the first two, it did have its moments. I’m not sure if there are more Cyber Action Team books in the making but given the introduction of two new characters, I hope so. And I’ll be there to read them if there are more. C+

~Jayne

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The Amazon Affiliate link earns us a 6-7% affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link (or anything for that matter) and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

REVIEW: Personal Demons by James Buchanan

SarahF — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:00:52 +0000

Dear James:

I’m not a big one for police procedurals — they usually bore the snot out of me — but I’m a big one for your writing and characters, so I read this anyway and I’m very glad I did. As always, your characters are very real, full of personality, and your spare writing style — no long introspective paragraphs or emotional declarations to be found — appeals to me. While I don’t like mystery books, I like figuring out the mysteries of two men reluctantly falling in love and unable to articulate what’s going on.

Chase Nozick is FBI, following the trail of the man who killed his partner on a bust five years earlier. He’s assigned to a Special Task Force in LA and to an LAPD partner who turns out to be the man he’d hooked up with for anonymous sex the previous night. Both Enrique and Chase are very much in the closet at work, but they use their time together — appropriately: no sex in the middle of a stake-out or on the run — to commit to and deepen a real relationship.

The case gets heavily involved in Cuban voodoo-type religion and its religious practitioners like faith-healers, priests, and spiritualists. There are tarot-type card readings, complete with their symbolism that if I went back and reread I’m sure would match up with the story. These types of literary devices — foreshadowing through card readings or palm readings — usually bug the heck out of me, but Chase is as skeptical of them as I am, which made up for it partly. On the other hand, Chase’s skepticism seemed to last longer than strictly plausible, which also bugged me. His character was one of rolling with what he was dealt, so his inability even to imagine that the weirdness happening to him wasn’t the product of charlatans was slightly annoying. He learns to accept the unexplainable by the end of the book, and maybe I’m too used to characters in paranormals who blithely accept the woo-woo shit happening to them, but I felt that it took him too long to do that.

I loved Chase’s relationship with Enrique. The sex is hot, he’s comfortable around his partner, and that’s all they’re both willing to admit to. There’s no undying declarations of love, but they both admit that they need the other and commit to trying to make it work at the end. I like that Chase is an alcoholic and that this isn’t demonized, glossed over, or made the center of his existence. He’s a drunk, he admits it, he deals with it, and eventually overcomes it, but it’s not the center of the story. And I love Enrique. The whole story is told from Chase’s third-person perspective, so we only see Enrique from Chase’s point of view, but I love Enrique’s self-confidence and general happiness. I love that his big secret isn’t that he’s gay, but that he’s actually a believer in the voodoo that we’re introduced to and I love how you deal with that — again, as just another aspect of who he is, rather than making it the center of everything Enrique.

I got a little lost in some of the details, both the details of the voodoo-inflected religion and about how and why Chase and Enrique were hunting for a woman who is the object of the task force’s search and how she got involved in the first place. The last was because I kept getting interrupted in my reading and because I’m not used to police procedurals, so I don’t keep that stuff in my head. The first, I think, happened because you were trying to make sure you got the religion and its trappings right and the need for detail in description overrode your usual almost telegraphic writing style. When clearing a building during a huge bust, Chase would probably not detail all the beads and baubles in an empty room. I mean, I know about the memory details of a high-adrenaline situation, but when you’ve spent a lot of time describing the trappings of the religion elsewhere, a repeat of those descriptions in a moment of high tension seems unnecessary, especially when you’re not saying anything new.

All of that said, this book somehow had a very gentle, almost calming feel to it. I keep coming back to it as an escape from the craziness of my life because Chase’s voice in my head seemed to keep chaos at bay. Despite the strangeness of the religion (and it got pretty graphic) and Chase’s alcoholism and the lack of emotional description about the romance, the story had a quietness to it, a controlled yet somehow lavish spareness that I enjoyed. I really like your writing style, your facility with inter-jurisdictional police lingo, your descriptions, and the way you write men who seem so real, so completely fucked-up, and yet so functional.

Grade: B

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased from MLR Press in print or ebook format. Link provided as courtesy.

This book was provided to the reviewer by the author. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The reviewer endorses most any book by James Buchanan, who is a spanking good writer — sometimes literally — and would do so without payment of a free book.

REVIEW: When Alex Was Bad by Jo Davis

SarahF — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:00:39 +0000

Dear Ms. Davis:

I picked up this book at B&N because of the cover. I bought it because of its premise and because I’m fascinated by full triad m/m/f menage books actually being sold in the romance section at bricks-and-mortar stores, so I wanted to support that. Once I did, the book was…well, okay. Nothing to write home about, even though I obviously am right now.

At her own house party, Liv Quinn catches her loving husband Alex making out with one of his junior partners (or maybe she was an associate — it kept changing). She doesn’t call him on it — and he resists full temptation anyway. Instead she makes a plan. She will allow Alex to stray, as long as he confesses everything after he’s done and then accepts his punishment by her hand. Because, see, she gets off — always has — on cuckold fantasies, in which a partner in a romantic relationship knows of their partner’s adultery. In fact, a cuckold might even prepare their partner for the adulterous encounter. The fascinating thing, however, is that cuckold fantasists are almost always male — it’s a very rare female fantasy. But! Liv definitely gets off on the thought of her husband in the act of cheating: they used to use it as pillowtalk until they got too busy. So she now uses it not only as a way to spice up her relationship with Alex, but, in her mind, to save it.

I was also intrigued by the punishment aspect of the story. Once again, in typical cuckold fantasies, the one being humiliated is the cuckold himself, the one cheated against. The cheatee is usually cast as superior, as doing whatever she wants. Turning that on its head and having the cheating partner come home and “confess” (as pillowtalk, except this time it’s real) and then be punished for his transgressions was a fascinating concept to me, and I wanted to see how it would play out.

And THEN there’s Jason. He’s just moved in next door to the Stricklands, and Liv immediately hits it off with him — in that, they’re having hot monkey sex two days later, while Alex is out boinking his associate/junior partner. Jason is a mostly homosexual-identified, but bi-curious, sexual submissive…who doesn’t act that submissive around Liv, but does to Alex. He’s also kinda shady. He gets strange phone calls from weird, peremptory people. He carries a gun! It’s obvious to the reader early on that he’s FBI, but once strange stuff starts happening to Alex, Alex and Liv understandably begin to suspect Jason because he’s not telling them the truth about everything.

And that’s where the story took an unwelcome left turn for me. The novel is billed as “a novel of erotic suspense” which is all very well, but don’t you think it’s enough that Liv and Alex have opened their marriage, Alex is fucking Jenna, Liv is fucking Jason, Jason and Alex are fucking, and Liv is whipping out (harhar) her inner dominatrix for the first time, all within the span of a couple of weeks? It’s all just a bit too much for Alex to start having threats against his life and giving that side-plot almost as much airtime as the sex. Major threats to his life, too, like car bombs, assassins at work, bullet almost-but-not-quite to the heart. I think if my life were being threatened like this, I wouldn’t be out gallivanting with my slutty junior associate/partner (big difference there, people! Huge! Which one is it?) two night after two guys tried to shoot me at work. But maybe that’s just me. What do I know?

I do know that there was more than enough here to fill a book if you’d just delved a little more into the emotional lives of the characters. There should be more to the discussion between Alex and Liv when they opened their marriage than, “Hey, whaddya think?!” and “Sure! Sounds hot!” which is basically the level of relationship conversation that they had. Leave out the suspense and make the suspense into true erotic suspense and it’d be a much better story. As it is, both the sexual developments and the suspense plots didn’t get near enough introspection or consideration. Everything seemed very surface, very slick and porno and hott!hott!hott! without meaning anything. This could have been a fascinating look into cuckold fantasies and a realistic construction of a triad BDSM relationship. Instead it was…forgettable.

As for the punishment, some of it was hot. And some of it…not so much, because Liv? she doesn’t have a fucking clue:

The first snap of the leather strip caught the left side of his balls. Fiery pain shot through his groin and he gasped, arching in the restraints. Giving him no mercy, she struck again. The next snap lashed his raging penis, sending bolts of pain to every nerve ending. But the agony also gave rise to a strange, sweet quickening.

The wave spread from his groin to his limbs, forcing him to comply. To accept. Two more lashes to his penis, another to his testicles. Heat coursed through his veins, pain and ecstasy swirling together, lighting his body like a torch. She was relentless, the blows raining down in rapid succession.

Intense, heavy CBT (Cock and Ball Torture) is certainly not where I’d suggest someone who has never done any form of BDSM before should start, as Liv does in this book. The penis can take a lot more impact play than the testicles, but using a leather strap on either, and using it to the same degree on both, is just not done except by the heaviest of heavy players and then after a lot of negotiation and discussion of limits, none of which happened here.

Look, I’m all for kinky play, trust me. But represented in a responsible manner or represented as obviously a fantasy, like the Story of O or Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, not as the logical, obvious place to start in what is otherwise a pretty tame sexual adventure, BDSM-wise. Because most of the other sexual encounters were of the cuckolding/teasing and denial/bondage variety, not hardcore BDSM.

And, of course, the villain? I’m not giving anything away by saying he’s a sociopathic sexual sadist, because in books like this, of COURSE he is. Sigh.

So, I was hoping to enjoy it and I did, as quick stroke fiction with some mildly hot scenes. Which is fine, of course. But it wasn’t a book that meant anything, as I was hoping it would be, and it’ll be off to PaperBackSwap as soon as I’ve double-checked the quotations.

Grade: C+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This trade paperback book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

REVIEW: Fade to Black by Leslie Parrish

Jayne — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:32:26 +0000

Dear Ms. Parrish,

It was the review at AAR that convinced me to try “Fade to Black.” I have the same issues with romantic suspense novels that reviewer Katie Mack lists: convenient TSTL moments, too alpha heroes, suspense plots that aren’t suspenseful and, my personal bugaboo, inappropriately timed sex. I also don’t like my rom-susp books to be too graphic. Thankfully, this book avoids these common pitfalls.

The FBI has a new super group of agents called the Cyber Action Team, aka CAT, and they’re out to solve Internet related murders. Sad world when we need something like this. The group is so new that they don’t even have their headquarters, so to speak, set up yet but already they’ve got their first case.

The Reaper is a killer who’s been at work for over a year and a half. He offers the other deviant souls who inhabit the website called Satan’s Playground the chance to bid on his auctions. The winning bidder gets to choose how the next victim will die. The Reaper then abducts the victim, kills them as per the request of the bidder then posts the video online for all to watch.

Dean Taggert is the lead agent assigned to check out the, up to now, missing person who the group thinks is actually the killer’s first victim. He hopes that the sheriff of the small Virginia town where the woman lived will be easy to work with. What he finds is that Stacey Rhodes is not only easy on the eyes but a damn good law enforcement officer.

The clock is ticking, the auction has been listed and a winning bid received. Can the team stop the Reaper before any more innocent victims die?

This world is getting sick enough that I’m afraid that someday something like this just might actually happen. But for now, it’s enough to just imagine it. After all the possible suspects get introduced into the plot, I like to take a guess then read along and see if I’m right. This time, I guessed wrong. Like Stacey and Dean warn each other, I need to avoid jumping to conclusions. Once I knew the killer’s id, I thought backwards to check that, yes, clues had been there. No neon arrows were pointing to the person and announcing “KILLER HERE!” but I also didn’t feel the end result came from nowhere.

Stacey is what Dean sees her to be, a good cop with good instincts who knows her small town and the people in it. Or most of them. It does shake her to realize that someone this twisted is living among the rest of the residents – some of whom also harbor dark secrets – but she doesn’t go all, “No way, you must be mistaken, that person couldn’t live in my town” on the FBI agents. She’s smart, contributes to the investigation and gets a pretty good guy – but one who would definitely do better with a fellow law officer rather than the woman he married the first time.

Dean is dedicated, as are the rest of the agents, and determined to take the Reaper down. The CAT agents work long hours, fuel themselves on coffee to keep going and depend on good, old fashioned detective work as well as using smart computer people. Dean’s also delighted to find a woman who bluntly speaks her mind and doesn’t get all coy about their mutual attraction. As I was reading the book, there was only one time when I thought, “Now is not the time for sex!” And thankfully at the last minute, Dean and Stacey veer away from it and go solve the case.

I’ve questioned this before in rom-susp books but I’d really like to know the answer: would agents/officers be allowed to continue working on a case that mirrors something that has affected them in real life? There is one agent here who seems to tread the line and in real life, I would worry that anything they uncovered in an investigation would be attacked by a good defense attorney. Or maybe I’ve just watched too many cases of Law & Order.

So here’s a heroine who doesn’t turn TSTL, a hero who thinks she’s sexy on the shooting range, an open ended romance that, yes, was a little fast, a killer who gets punished and the beginning of a new series. All in all, pretty darn good, IMO. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

REVIEW: Crash Into Me by Jill Sorenson

Jane — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:00:56 +0000

Dear Ms. Sorenson:

I have read your category novels and thus I was excited to make the transition to full length mass market novels. This book had very real characters and very steamy love scenes. I found the suspense to take kind of a back seat to the deception/romance story and that, at times, the secondary love story between the hero’s daughter and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks to be the more compelling storyline.

Sonny Vasquez is part of VICAP for the FBI. She is asked to go undercover to see if she can flush out the SoCal Strangler, a man who has been picking off young women along the southern California coast. Sonny is to go in and try to seduce Ben Fortune, a former champion surfer whose own wife was killed three years ago by the purported SoCal Strangler. Except the man that was arrested and imprisoned committed suicide and in his note wrote that he did not kill Olivia Fortune or anyone else. Fortune becomes the top suspect. After observing Fortune, Sonny begins to rethink her plan to present herself as a beach bunny as Ben shows no interest in them. He is an early to rise, early to bed kind of guy who lives more monkish than a priest.

This is because all of Ben’s energy is devoted to taking care of his teenaged daughter, Carly. Carly is messed up and it’s mostly Ben’s fault. He got Olivia pregnant when they were 17. Then he took off full of fame, success, and fortune hopping from one wave to another and from one bed to another. Olivia refused to marry him, despite his repeated requests until Ben dried out and gave up the other women. He finally got his act together but by that time, Carly already believed that surfing was more important to her dad than she was. To top it off, Carly and Ben’s rock, Olivia, was murdered.

Carly isn’t dealing with her mother’s death very well, although it happened three years ago. She’s tempted by death. She’s self mutilating and she’s just so confused and angry and lonely. Ben’s not much better. All he does is surf and watch Carly until Sonny comes into his life as Summer Moore. Sonny aka Summer is edgy, dangerous, and hard to get and it all plays well for Ben who for once since his wife’s death feels the stirrings of arousal. While Sonny is supposed to be there to investigate whether Ben is the SoCal Strangler, she gets tangled up in Ben and Carly’s lives. Complicating the situation is James Matthews, a teenager who has lusted after Carly for years.

It is James and Carly’s relationship that carries the book. James is the product of a horrible home environment. Abused by his father physically and emotionally, he carries with him a great sense of self hate. Carly is all that he could never be and when she approaches him, it’s like a dream come true yet he knows he’s not good enough for her. The scenes involving Carly and James and Ben are frought with emotion and James’ dual desires to protect Carly and not taint her with his bad blood are constantly at war with one another.

There was no effort to make Ben or Sonny into great parents. Ben was not a great parent, but perhaps because of his past, he understood what the real dangers for Carly were and it wasn’t the threat of sexual tension between Carly and some punk kid. But Ben is a dad and he reacts like a dad, angry at this boy James and afraid of him as well.

Sonny and Ben’s relationship is not more complicated that James and Carly but less likeable because Sonny spends most of the time lying to Ben about who she is. It really left a terrible taste in my mouth that Sonny would engage Ben the way she did, particularly because she didn’t think that Ben was a killer and because she cared for him. Sonny lured Ben in, knowing exactly what buttons to push and she never thought of revealing the truth to him at any time. When Sonny’s comeuppance came, I felt like Ben had every right to treat her like he did and that Sonny didn’t do half the groveling that she should have to make up for her deceit.

The suspense portion of the book was weak as well. Sonny did very little investigating. I didn’t believe for a second that Ben had killed his wife and the attempts to create drama by casting the suspicious light onto him did nothing for me. It was obvious who the killer was, I thought, and the failure of Sonny to consider the other individuals as suspects did nothing to dispel the idea that Sonny was a bad FBI agent.

I loved the location of La Jolla and Torrey Pines. The love of surfing and the metaphors that the water represented had strong visual impact. I really felt like I had been transported to Ben’s beach house. The sensuality of the book was high. I admit I felt uncomfortable at times with the explicitness of the teen sexuality but it was a very important component of James and Carly’s relationship. The chemistry between Ben and Sonny was electric and their love scenes smoked up the pages. I like alot of realism in my contemporary books and Ben and Sonny and James and Carly were all very real characters for me. I received the book as an ARC but bought my own digital copy; and so while I was debating between a B and B-, despite the flaws in the story, I had to give this story a B.*

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

*To clarify, I felt that because I wanted to have a digital copy of the book I must have thought highly of the book so ultimately it must have been a B grade for me.

REVIEW: Dark of Night by Suzanne Brockmann

SarahF — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:00:53 +0000

Disclaimer: So as to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Dr. S is “a complete, utter, and unabashed FanGrrl” and has “a professional relationship” with Brockmann. Dr. S does not enjoy any monetary gain from the sales of the books. We encourage you to seek out other reviews (or read a few chapters in the bookstore) should this review leave you with some questions about whether this book would work for you.

Dear Ms. Brockmann:

Despite your best efforts, the only way one would not know spoilers for this book is if one (a). didn’t care, or (b). lived in a dark, dank, cold, internet-less cave in the middle of a spooky forest surrounded an impenetrable and very smelly swamp. So while I’m going to try to review this wonderful book without too many spoilers, I’ll be employing the spoiler font with a very liberal hand.

You are famous (infamous?) for your innovative story arcs in which future primary couples not only meet in books previous to their own, but they actually start the relationship. Gone Too Far (Book 6 of your Troubleshooter series) finished the overwhelmingly popular story arc of Sam and Alyssa (that starts in earnest in TS#2). Flashpoint (TS#7), Tess Bailey and Jimmy Nash’s book, starts the arc of Sophia Ghaffari, Lawrence Decker, and Dave Malkoff. Well, actually, it looked like it started the story arc of Sophia and Decker, while Dave was just a secondary character. Dark of Night is TS#14, so this has been a long damn arc and Dark of Night provides quite the culmination.

The story so far: in Flashpoint, Sophia is the forced bride of a brutal warlord in Kazbhekistan, the fictional country that combines the worst of the post-war chaos of Iraq and the repressions of Taliban-led Afghanistan. She resourcefully escapes during the earthquake that the TS squad (Tess, Nash, Dave, Decker, and a few others) use as an excuse to enter the country, under the guise of humanitarian aide workers. Sophia, hunted and desperate, basically forces a blowjob on Decker, using it as a tool to try to distract him, at the culmination of which she tries to shoot him. Decker finally realizes Sophia is one of the good guys and manages to get her out of the country and set her up in an apartment and gets her a job with TS Inc., but he never forgives himself for not saying no forcefully enough and for, in his mind, adding to the overwhelming abuse she had already suffered. She hero-worships Deck over the next…five? years and bemoans her crush to her best buddy, Dave, who is completely and utterly in love forever and ever with her. It’s the kind of crush that everyone in TS Inc. knows about, and, in fact, they both almost lose their jobs when Decker refuses to be in the same city with Sophia.

The controversy, of course, lies in that despite the fact that both Sophia and Decker get their HEAs in this book, they don’t get them with each other. Sophia, in fact, ends up with Dave. And Decker, well, Decker, super-SEAL that he is, Decker ends up with the ditzy secretary. And this controversy is OMG!HUGE. The online wank, it runneth over. Readers, we have been Betrayed! You, Ms. Brockmann, are performing character-ectomies! You’ve led us on for six, no, seven, no, wait! eight books! You’ve lied to us! Deliberately misled us! How dare you, you evil evil woman?! Don’t you know we’ve got expectations, dammit!

I think this outrage gets at a core issue in the romance community, an issue similar to the condom-conundrum. Do we read romance for “reality” or for “fantasy”? Do we mind if our “fantasies” are interrupted with safe-sex? Do we mind if the romantic reliance on One Twu Wuv is derailed because, you know, sometimes someone will crush on the wrong person? Or does one fraught sexual encounter and some subsequent emotionally-charged, one-sided pining mean that these two people are destined for each other, no matter what?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the outrage, even if I’m far from participating. I get how (intentionally?) misleading clues, both internal to the series and external in the meta-discussion (pairing Sophia and Decker in reader polls and your Extras Booklets), can lead to readers feeling betrayed. But, as a complete, utter, and unabashed FanGrrl (although, I like to think, not in the creepy or crazy-ass sense), and, full disclosure here, as someone with a professional relationship with you, I was willing to trust you to convince me that Sophia and Decker were better off without each other.

And, getting back to the review, you managed that 110%. As the author who made me like Mary Lou, Sam’s racist ex-wife, and made me believe in her love for and HEA with a non-white Muslim immigrant (Into the Night, TS#5), I trusted that you’d convince me that Sophia and Dave loved each other with a full, passionate, consuming love, and that Decker and Tracy, TS Inc.’s apparently ditzy secretary, could build a full, passionate, equal relationship. And you did. Boy howdy, did you.

You make us believe by not denying the very things that are causing the reader controversy in the first place. Yes, Sophia absolutely goes into her relationship with Dave thinking that he is her second choice, behind Decker, and you don’t hide that. So readers who say “But how can we ever believe that Dave isn’t just a second choice?” are shown precisely how, because he IS initially Sophia’s second choice. Dave knows that Sophia thinks this and he’s (mostly) content with this. He’s just happy to be with her, even if he also KNOWS that he’s her second choice. You don’t hide that and you therefore manage to convince us when Sophia realizes that Dave is, and always will be, her first and only choice. Decker can’t see himself with Tracy anymore than any of us can, and you don’t hide that. So when we see him bemusedly fall for her, and her with him, we can believe it fully. You don’t flinch, you don’t falter–in fact, you REVEL in the relationship expectations you’ve nurtured for seven books. And then you show us, without a shadow of a doubt, that Sophia and Dave, and Decker and Tracy, belong together, that there’s no way that they could be happily, passionately, fully in love with anyone else. And therein lies your genius and why I keep coming back to your books, even when disappointed with some of them.

Another reader concern: this book is absolutely a romance. While some of your previous books in the Troubleshooter series seemed to be edging away from full-on romance into military suspense with some vaguely romantic themes, this one is 100% romance extraordinaire. There’s a suspense plot that’s seamlessly woven into the romance in that the characters would not be able to come to the emotional realizations they do in order to be able to grow and mature and deserve their happy ending without the suspense plot, but the romances drive the book and keep you reading. Or at least, they kept me reading.

As a super-extra bonus for your readers: multiple Happy Endings. Generally, because your character arcs span four, five, seven books, this means that, although the main couple get their HEA, the secondary couple(s) are usually torn apart (Sam’s marriage to Mary Lou, for example), punished for not having their shit together enough to deserve their happy ending. No double or triple weddings at the end of your books, a la Susan Elizabeth Phillips, or, say, Shakespeare’s comedies. Your readers get one happy ending and one doom and gloom ending and you’ve said explicitly that you do this on purpose, not only to make the happy ending that much more precious and rare, but also precisely to elicit emotion from your readers. So to have two (or even, depending on how one counts, three! because Tess and Nash are finally fully happy) full-on happy endings is almost unheard of from you (well, except for Ric and Annie AND Jules and Robin in Force of Nature TS#11) and so satisfying.

One last point, because this is my self-proclaimed area of DA expertise. Thank you for showing a safe and Oh so sexy D/s relationship. Thank you for showing a strong alpha male as a submissive. Thank you for showing that BDSM is an integral part of a person’s sexual identity and that acknowledging it, learning not to be ashamed of it, and exercising it will make a person healthier, happier, and, paradoxically, more normal.

I wish I had some niggles with this book, so that I could prove that I’m not a total, unthinking fangrrl. I guess, if I were thinking hard, my niggles would all have to do with the bad guys: their apparent omniscience seemed a little over the top. And the figuring out of the WHY of the suspense plot — that is, who exactly is hunting the good guys and why — is a little bit of an info-dump, even if done in dialogue. But I like the reason. Its very mundane-ness makes a larger point than if it were a huge Plot of Terror. And why the final villain didn’t just cut his losses and run, I’ll never know. For what it’s worth, there are books of yours, especially TS Inc. books, that I would grade with a B or even lower, books that seem to be filler that gets us to the point of being able to complete the other, more important, story arcs. But this one isn’t like that, of course, because it IS the end of a story arc. But I also think it does a MUCH better job than the other story arc endings: Gone Too Far (TS#6: Sam and Alyssa’s book) or Breaking Point (TS#9: Max and Gina’s book). Maybe that’s because Decker’s romance both starts and is rewarded solely in this book? I’m not sure. I just know that this book ranks, for me, with The Unsung Hero (TS#1) and Heart Throb (non-TS stand alone) as your most perfectly plotted, most brilliantly written books.

I have always admired (WARNING: long PDF biography of Brockmann) the innovation you bring to the romance genre. Its authors like you who keep romance alive and interesting. I think the sheer volume and vitriol of reader outrage whenever you do something new is a testament to how well you manage to do this.

Grade: A-

Sincerely,

-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

REVIEW: For the Love of Pete by Julia Harper

Jane — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:00:17 +0000

Dear Ms. Harper:

I am a big fan of the Elizabeth Hoyt historicals. They are richly detailed with full bodied emotional depth. They are sometimes dark but have always delivered a satisfying read. I can see where writing fun contemporary romps would serve as a nice relief as well as allowing an author to stretch the boundaries of her writing repertoire.

Unfortunately this book with its frivolity and humor didn’t translate well. Poetess Zoey Adler, who works at a health food store but gulps down Culver Butterburgers like they were manna from heaven, was stunned to see some burly guy run out of her apartment building with her baby niece, Pete, in tow. Zoey had been in an argument over a parking space with Mr. Lips of Sin, a handsome but non talkative, tenant of her apartment complex, when she was shot at, bowled over, and caught up in a road race before she knows it.

Mr. Lips of Sin is Dante Torelli, undercover FBI agent, working to ferret out a rogue agent working in the Chicago office. Zoey climbs into Dante’s Beemer as he is about to give chase for baby Pete is the son of a mobster who is ready to flip on a Chicago mob boss. He knows that without the baby, the likelihood of the father testifying is close to zero. Dante makes a half hearted attempt to shake Zoey but she won’t leave. She wants Pete back too.

In a comedy of errors, Pete is left in a Humvee which is then stolen by the sisters who are chasing after a cachet of stolen saffron. Pete is later stolen by someone else who takes another vehicle. All these kids left in cars by themselves in the dead of winter . . . .Anyway, the chase is on to find baby Pete, prevent anyone from getting killed, clear Dante’s name, and find the two of them happy at the end of the book.

This book read like a screenplay full of inept burglars, the obligatory minority group mined for laughs, and the opposites attract pairing of the uptight FBI agent and the free spirit. Even the mob boss is cliched. (At one point, he has a cookie and says ominously “That’s how the cookie crumbles”). There are 60 some chapters to the book and each chapter contains a different POV prefaced with a time stamp. My linear abilities are fairly weak and after about the 13th chapter, I gave up trying to figure out if I was two minutes beyond the last chapter, the same time, or minutes behind. I just went with it but I do wonder whether its reasonable for readers to keep track 65 time stamps in one book. On top of that, there were seven points of view represented: Zoey, Dante, the two sisters, Tony the inept mobster, Rutgar the very bad mobster, and the rogue FBI agent.

Dante isn’t even a very gruff FBI agent. He’s actually pretty loquacious spilling the details of his top secret agenda to Zoey without even a hint of a struggle. But because he had to play the straight man to Zoey’s fresh and modern part, he’s given old man music taste, folds his clothes, drives a Beemer convertible (sorry, don’t believe a 50s guy who folds his dress pants and puts them in the drawer at night is going to drive a sporty Beemer), isn’t really thrilled with eating messy Butterburgers, and so forth. Weirdly he begins talking about relationships with Zoey not less than 24 hours after meeting her. Maybe because he’s so uptight, the zing of Zoey hits him harder than most.

While I don’t want to belabor the point, I was uncomfortable with the portrayal of the two Indian women who were trying to open up a fantastic resturant in Chicago and their secret ingredient was “Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar”. Their speech patterns are peppered with “very, very” and “indeed.”

Mongra kesar was fantastically expensive, legendarily flavorsome, and very, very illegal indeed.
***
It would make them famous and ensure their restaurant’s success, thus making them very, very rich indeed.
***
“Yes, of course I am right,” Savita-di said. “Was I not right in saying that That Terrible Man would still have our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar in his yellow Humvee truck?”
“Yes, indeed.”
***
Savita-di must be frightened indeed to bring it up now.
***
At least Pratima hoped they were on highway 57, for Savita-di’s ability to read maps was quite poor indeed,

It sounded like they were patterned after the Simpson’s Apu. After all, isn’t it kind of funny that these Indian women say “very, very” all the time. It was similar to writing about two Japanese women, opening up a Sushi restaurant, and chasing after their stolen secret ginseng recipe but jumping out and taking pictures of each other every two miles at gas stations and road signs

It would be one thing if the characters were inviting you to snigger at the generalizations, but instead it was like they were being laughed at. You can say that I’m overly sensitive and I’ll accept that criticism. Maybe I am. Obviously the story was meant as to be an homage, of sorts, to the Indian culture which was portrayed lovingly in other sections of the book. In fact, it was this careful attention to detail that made the constant usage of the words “indeed” and “very, very” so jarring. Wasn’t the fact that they were chasing after a contraband SPICE and stealing a yellow Humvee from a mobster and ending up with not one, but two kidnapped babies funny enough?

Mostly this book is frothy and without substance. The plot doesn’t really hold up to inspection, from the botched FBI witness protection program to the way that the covert op to dig out a rogue agent to the inadvertent kidnapping of the babies. It requires a large suspension of disbelief and I just have a hard time exerting that in a contemporary setting even though I know that it’s purposely unrealistic at some points. The relationship between Dante and Zoey isn’t really well developed mostly because half the book is told from the point of view of someone other than the two of them. Why the Speed formula doesn’t work for me in a book, I’ll never know. C-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

REVIEW: Fire and Ice by Julie Garwood

Jane — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:00:18 +0000

Dear Ms. Garwood

The lure of the 100% micropay rebate at Fictionwise was too great for me to overcome despite the fact my last few encounters with your books have not ended well. I’m happy to say that Fire and Ice is an improvement over recent publications but it doesn’t reach the level of the Garwood keeper shelf. At the hardcover price, I’d be hardpressed to recommend this as anything but a library read for many romance readers. For a hardcover Garwood fan, though, you have to ask yourself if reading an okay Garwood is better than reading 3 to 4 new authors.

Sophie Rose is the daughter of a notorious suspected criminal in the city of Chicago. Her father, Bobby Rose, is like a modern day Robin Hood. He steals money from corrupt businessmen and gives it back to the victims (and keeps some for himself). Sophie works for a small independent newspaper publisher because it was the only one whose editor promised not to ask Sophie to write about her father. Sophie, herself, has taken to cutting off most contact with her father, refusing funds from him and trying to live within her own earned means. It’s not easy. Sophie has enjoyed the good life full of Dolce & Gabbanna, luxurious accommodations, and meals.

Sophie is sent on a crap assignment (much like all of her assignments are) to cover one William Emmet Harrington, a wealthy self absorbed individual, who is running his twenty-fifth marathon. During their interview William reveals that after the race, he’ll be partaking in a secret project that only the fittest are selected for. William never finishes the race and Sophie ends up with a phone call from someone in Alaska informing her that William was eaten by a Polar Bear and her card was in his sock.

Chicago is heating up for Sophie as her father is being accused of stealing a pension fund and so she decides, with the approval of her editor, to head to Alaska to investigate William’s death. Because she is much beloved by everyone but the villains, an FBI agent is enlisted to go with her, as a favor to Sophie’s protectors. Sophie’s groupies include a retired former policeman who spends hours at a time checking her apartment and work place for bugs and expects no renumeration; Sophie’s friend’s very rich brother, Aiden, who set himself up as Sophie’s guardian while her father was on the lam when Sophie was 13; and assorted other police, FBI, and other such individuals. No Garwood story is truly a Garwood without the innocent, but passionate, kind hearted, giving heroine who everyone loves.

There is plenty of good humor in the story, particularly the exchanges between Sophie and Jack, the FBI agent chosen to protect her and partner of the FBI husband of one of Sophie’s friends.

"Stop looking at me like that."
"How am I looking at you?" Jack asked.
"Like you think I’m an idiot."
"Then I nailed it. Good."

Jack is very inscrutable, both in the book to Sophie, but also to the reader. You get very few scenes from Jack’s point of view. Jack is efficient, fairly unemotional, and likes the ladies. At some point in the book, I think after they have sex for the first time, Jack decides that he only likes one lady. But how that came about and why is something the reader has to fill in for herself.

While this story has a romance between Jack and Sophie, I am hardpressed to call it a romance because it doesn’t focus on the emotional journey between Jack and Sophie, but rather the story of William Herrington’s death and how that might be connected to a study of wolves in Alaska. There is a major plot point that is left hanging at the end, either intentionally or because you weren’t quite sure where to go with it, but in an effort for realism, I thought it should have been addressed. The mystery was fairly easy to figure out although who the principal "wrongdoer" was well hidden.

Most of the characters are recognizable as standard Garwood players. There’s nothing revelatory in this book, but if readers are looking for a familiar comfort read, Fire and Ice would fit the bill. C.

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or ebook format.

REVIEW: Nameless by Debra Webb

Jane — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:34:09 +0000

Dear Ms. Webb:

The romantic suspense market seems crowded these days and it’s hard to pick out a new author. It’s not because the suspense market isn’t full of good authors. It is actually one genre that seems to be full of competent authors and competent books. The problem is that from one to another, they all seem to have the same storylines (law enforcement officers solving crimes), the same hooks that drive the suspense (serial killers), the same time frame (twenty four hours to a few days).

What makes a RS standout for me, then, is the characterizations of the lead law enforcement officers. They must have a compelling narrative, outside of the suspense, in order for me to want to pick up the next book in the series. So while I might come to an RS book different ways*, I won’t go back to the same RS writer unless I found the issues outside the suspense to be interesting.

Such is the case of Nameless. Keishon’s review, while positive, said that the character growth was marginal, but I thought it was large part of what made the story work.

Ryan McBride was cast out of the FBI after having built a legendary reputation for closing everyone of his child abduction cases. His last case went south and his supervisor decided that McBride would take the fall. For the first year after he was fired, he kept thinking that the FBI would wise up and come crawling back to him. With each Amber Alert that would pass and the phone would remain silent, McBride fell into a greater depression, medicating himself with cheap sex, cheap booze and cigarettes. He had reached a state of alcohol induced numbness when three years later, rookie FBI Agent Vivian Grace shows up with the invitation he had given up waiting for.

The FBI is desperate to have him back because someone has kidnapped a six year old girl and will only give the clues to her release to McBride. McBride agrees to go with Grace because while he hates the FBI, he can’t resist the siren lure of being a hero again, even if that isn’t what he thinks motivates him. Grace is bound by her own past demons. Her supervisor knows her past, a sordid, victimized one, and that keeps her on the fringes of big cases. Getting McBride back to Alabama to find the missing girl will be one step in finally proving that she can handle her own cases.

McBride is attracted to Grace and uses a blatant come on strategy to put distance between the two of them. Grace is savvy enough to figure that out but doesn’t appreciate his long looks and his innuendos more because she’s responding to them in a way she hadn’t before.

McBride and Grace are given a series of tasks by McBride’s “Devoted Fan.” The madman is determined to show the FBI that they were wrong in firing McBride and that he could save people. The FBI isn’t quite sure whether McBride is in on the ploy and he’s treated with as much skepticism as respect.

There are some flaws to the story. There were what I thought to be obvious clues that the agents conveniently overlooked so as not to solve the problem early on. And the clues seemed so easily solved for a villain who was purportedly a genius.

The suspense is driven by the setup and the clues that McBride and Grace are given. Each task is timed and if they can’t solve the riddles before the time is up, the victim dies. But the point here isn’t that the victim is to die. The point is for McBride to solve the riddle and be the savior. McBride and Grace are both constantly beset with doubts which makes them all the more accessible. McBride calls himself “shitty baggage” because he realizes that he’s messed up in the head. Grace finally is forced to acknowledge that running away from her past doesn’t actually make the past disappear.

They are two pieces of damaged goods that could survive separately but together are not only a good team, but good for each other. The romance was well integrated, in part because McBride and Grace’s personal issues were amplified by the suspense. And while there were steamy sex scenes, not of them seemed to be out of place. The suspense kept the plot moving but the two lead characters were unique enough to make me wonder what else does this author write about. B

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format (please, SMP, get with the program).

*I thought that Jayne wrote a review for Traceless, but I couldn’t find it in the archives. It could be that I got the name from Keishon’s review of this book but I bought this book based upon someone’s recommendation. It has lingered in my TBR stack for the past few months along with Faceless, the August release. Guess what I’ll be reviewing next though?

(in this case because of Jayne’s compelling review of Traceless and Keishon’s review of this book),