Family Business by Emma McKee

TITLE: Family Business
AUTHOR: Emma McKee
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 62k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $3.99

Loan officer Nora Bainbridge’s great-aunt is as eccentric as they come, but then again, as an aging actress from Hollywood’s golden era, she’s expected to be. When she breaks her leg, she asks for Nora to move in and take care of her cat, a financial arrangement Nora can’t refuse right now. Little does she know that the TV producer poking his nose around, looking for information on her Aunt Elnora’s ancient connections with the mob, is really an FBI agent, or that he just might be the answer to her recent dry spell…

When an author’s humor works for me, I’m much more inclined to finish a book, even when I can see its flaws. This was one of those cases.

It opens with FBI agent Luke McKinnon staking out aging Hollywood actress, Elnora Bainbridge, in hopes he can determine whether or not his teenaged crush is involved in a stolen art scam. He witnesses her take a fall while chasing her cat and calls 911 anonymously. That same fall puts Elnora in the hospital, and prompts her to pay her great-niece, named after her, to housesit and take care of the over-indulged cat. Nora agrees only because she needs the money. She’s barely making ends meet as she struggles to regain her financial footing after her ex cleaned her out. Luke shows up and introduces himself as a television producer, interested in doing a show on Elnora. He’s struck by the physical similarities between the two women, and it becomes harder for him to separate his growing feelings for Nora with the pressing evidence that Elnora really is involved in something illegal. He should know, after all. His grandfather was one of the mobsters who fought over Elnora before she gave up her acting career for good.

I fell for this story very early on, mostly because I was laughing out loud in the first few pages at Luke’s spying antics. The humor in this worked for me, mostly because I got sucked in by Luke’s appalled thoughts that he would now be scarred with memories of his favorite teenaged crush running around naked in her eighties. It’s a little silly, but that farcical nature worked within the context of the story, keeping it light for most of its length. Not all of it was a success. I’m not a fan of puns at all, and having the nosy neighbor named Ima Payne was mostly just eyeroll-worthy. Still, I liked Nora and Luke’s self-deprecating humor enough to like them in conjunction, thus making it easier to invest in their potential romance.

The supporting cast is colorful as well, from her spirited Aunt Elnora with her illicit online businesses, to Elnora’s attorney Albert, all the way to the overweight, over-indulged cat, Mr. Witherby. Nora bounces around from person to animal with a refreshing aplomb, and if she sometimes seems a bit scattered as a result, it’s nice to be remembered that events are happening very quickly within the story (so quickly that at least once, the author messes up the timeline). More get introduced as the story progresses, and it’s the firm addition of the Mob (as opposed to the hints that they might be involved at the top of the story) that actually starts weakening the tale.

So much is made about what might have happened, the truth is very anticlimactic when it comes out. Then, it plays out so quickly, in a scene that’s far too talky even for a farce, that I was left with a vague sense of, “That’s it?” Add to that a time jump at the end that, while justified, watered down the response rather than heightened it, and I was a little disappointed by the time I got my HEA. If only the last third had lived up to the hype of the first two. This could’ve been truly remarkable then.

Readability	8/10 – Humor goes a long way in smoothing over rough transitions and an anticlimactic ending
Hero	7/10 – His perspective was what enticed me to make this a definite finish, funny and just deprecating enough to be charming
Heroine	7/10 – Self-aware with just enough of an edge
Entertainment value	7/10 – I responded to humor in this, as well as the obvious love for old movies, though the ending didn’t live up to the promise of the first two-thirds
World building	7/10 – Enough hints to make it interesting, not enough to make it rich
TOTAL:	36/50

Lying Eyes by Amy Atwell

TITLE: Lying Eyes
AUTHOR: Amy Atwell
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 103k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $5.39

Jewelry designer/store owner Iris Fortune is trying to lead a normal, stable life, but her magician father keeps finding ways of disrupting it. His latest scheme involves mythological Russian gems, a thief named Mickey who makes her heart pound more than her lawyer fiancé, a strong-willed rabbit named Edgar, and oh yeah, two half sisters she never knew she had…

There is so much going on in this romantic suspense, it’s almost tough to know where to start. The premise at the beginning is simple enough. Mickey, a hired thug, snatches Cosmo, an aging magician, because he hasn’t followed through on his end of a corrupt business deal. It’s up to Mickey to find the gems Cosmo was supposed to turn over, except Cosmo manages to get away. Mickey then goes to Cosmos’s daughter Iris, the owner of a jewelry store at the Bellagio, to see if she knows anything. Iris is engaged to a lawyer with political aspirations, a boring, safe choice to counter the less than predictable life she had growing up. Iris gets a call from her security company about an unauthorized entry, and when she realizes it has to be Cosmo, lies to protect him. Thus starts a long, convoluted race to find the gems Cosmo is withholding.

The problem isn’t that the plot isn’t interesting. It certainly is. The problem rests in just how many people get involved in it. Right away, we’re thrown into the thick of things, because in addition to Mickey and Iris, there’s Hunter the cop, Allie and Cory (Iris’s half-sisters), the other thugs Mickey works with, Turner the hitman, and the Boss who’s behind it at all. By the story’s end, we get even more characters. It’s not just trying to keep them all straight. There are scenes in so many different POVs (only one per scene most of the time, thank god), that it’s often hard to make emotional connections to any of them.

Thankfully, enough time is spent with Mickey and Iris to recognize them as the central pairing. Mickey is charmingly roguish and capable of pulling Iris out of her safe little shell. She’s intelligent and just wary enough to be believable, but I did feel that she got lost in the shuffle quite often. They have strong chemistry, and I loved how he was able to get her to relax.

Between all this, however, are scenes that often drag on too long (seriously, losing Edgar in the gardens lasted forever), and some that seemed completely extraneous altogether. I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if it had been more tightly focused, rather than allowed to ramble on where it did. It worked to keep me guessing as to what would happen next, but beyond that, I was left fairly unsatisfied.

Readability	7/10 – Clean editorially, but some scenes drag on for far too long and the huge cast does little but muddy the waters
Hero	7/10 – Charming and roguish
Heroine	7/10 – Has a tendency to get lost in the shuffle of more colorful characters, but nothing awful about her
Entertainment value	7/10 – This would’ve ranked higher if certain parts had dragged it down
World building	9/10 – Extensive and fully realized
TOTAL:	37/50

To Die For by Caitlyn Willows

TITLE: To Die For
AUTHOR: Caitlyn Willows
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 42k)
GENRE: Contemporary suspense erotic romance
COST: $7.00

Once a victim of domestic abuse, Zoe has moved on with her life, doing her best to rebuild with the man responsible for the damage behind bars. But now he’s out, and in a chance encounter, lets her know he’s coming after her. When Detective Frank Ludwig finds out, he swears to protect her. He’s been in love with her for six months, and damned if he’s going to let anybody hurt Zoe, even if she’s more than capable of taking care of herself…

Though this romantic suspense had a lot of potential in it, I finished it feeling like it just never quite hit the mark.

It starts off at an emotional high, as Zoe is coming off her shift where she has just saved a cop’s life by talking to him and keeping him engaged. However, in the same incident, she was also threatened. Her abusive ex-boyfriend was the criminal in question, and when he heard her voice, exploded with anger, emotions that have built since he was arrested and convicted after she’d turned him in. She arrives at a Denny’s, trying to figure out what she’s going to do next, and is dismayed to see a group of cops she works with there already. They applaud her as a hero, but when the man she’s been lusting over, Frank Ludwig, decides to join her, the whole story comes out. Frank has been in love with Zoe for months. When he hears about the danger, he refuses to see her slip through the cracks, taking her personal safety into his own hands while the department does what they can to track down her ex. Thus begins an explosive few days, as the threats escalate and the pair come to grips with their mutual attraction.

In spite of the confusing opening pages, enough becomes clear as the story progresses and Zoe opens up to Frank a little. I was intrigued about where it was going. Zoe is sympathetic and relatable to many women, insecure, plus-sized, and I liked her, even though she felt scattered. I disregarded the latter because it felt organic to her situation. I was meeting her in the middle of an emotional crisis. Of course, she’d be scattered. But what was scattered at the start became bouncing around from one extreme to another as the story progressed. It got a little tedious.

Frank proved the same. I liked him from the start, his fierce defense of Zoe, his determination to do the right thing. I was rolling onto loving him until the first time he really put his foot in his mouth. He has a tendency to stop thinking once their relationship turns sexual, and blurts out the first thing he thinks of, which is usually very much the wrong thing to say in the moment. This propensity gets worse as the story goes on, mostly because it felt like that was the only way to create any internal conflict between these two. They yo-yo like this throughout the entire book, a jerky effect that is mirrored by the stop and go nature of the suspense angle. It makes it easy to put down, even though I wanted to pick it up again moments later.

Suspense thrives on building tension, and while there is danger throughout this book, when the lulls come, the tension drops away almost entirely rather than ebb enough to relax the reader into getting sucked even harder into the next swell. I suspect it worked against me because of the extended nature of the romantic scenes within those lulls. I needed that momentum in the romance, but they went on too long for me, even as hot as these two were together.

In the end, the story was enjoyable enough for me not to regret reading it, but I ultimately feel like maybe with some tighter editing, it could have been really great.

Readability	7/10 – Minor typos and some terminology that usually turns me off, but otherwise swift and easy
Hero	6/10 – His reactions felt realistic in hindsight, but his propensity for stepping in it wore thin
Heroine	6/10 – Liked that she knew how to take care of herself, but she felt a little all over the place
Entertainment value	6/10 – The pacing was rather jerky, making it easy to put down when I hit lulls
World building	7/10 – The emotional reality of Zoe’s past was well-done, but I kept feeling like I was missing something in regards to the suspense portion
TOTAL:	32/50

Dark Side of Dreaming by Ann Bruce

TITLE: Dark Side of Dreaming
AUTHOR: Ann Bruce
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 31k)
GENRE: Erotic romantic suspense
COST: $5.20

Ex-thief Cleo Moran has come out of retirement to steal a statue that once belonged to her family. The only problem is, the man she intends to rob is just as smart and savvy as she is. Foiling her burglary is simple. Letting her just walk away is not…

Don’t ask for a better blurb than that. I read this novella through twice and still don’t know what happened in big chunks of it.

It doesn’t start out badly. There’s a one-page prologue of a harrowing dream that hints at a suspenseful ride ahead. But then it turns left into Cleo’s foiled heist, and the story stumbles into forced chemistry and confusion as we meet the owner of her would-be prize, Sasha Michaels. Sasha sends her along her way, but when Cleo gets home, she’s attacked by someone who expects her to have successfully taken the statue. She fights him off, but Sasha shows up and won’t leave her alone, convinced her attacker is the same one who attacked his sister.

The story only gets more convoluted from there. The problem is, none of it really gets explained. The whole first half of the story is primarily Cleo and Sasha fighting – and losing the battle with – their attraction. We have no history on either of them, and no sense of personality, so essentially they’re just bodies going through the motions. I felt nothing for either of them, and the sex wasn’t unique or hot enough to compensate for that lack of connection. They each have reasons to want the statue, but their POVs dance around what those issues are. It’s probably meant to be suspenseful and surprising as a result. It’s not. It’s annoying and distances me even further from cardboard characters who could’ve used a dose of something interesting to keep me engaged.

The plot starts picking up about two-thirds of the way through the story, but while the pace quickens, the jumps get bigger. The author has a bad habit of mentioning characters by name in ways that assume prior knowledge, but in effect only leave me scratching my head. For instance, the attacker gets named on page 79 (out of 109), identified by name in casual conversation between Sasha and Cleo, but not once mentioned by name prior to that for the reader to go, “Aha! That’s who the bad guy is!” All it accomplished was to make me think I’d missed something, and then go back, re-read, and then do a search on the name to see if I was being foolish and/or blind. There’s even more instances of it after this, but that ends up spoiling what are meant to be surprises (but actually come across as sloppy plotting). The ending is as unsatisfying as the whole first half.

For a novella, it felt interminably long. For suspense, that’s the kiss of death for me.

Readability	4/10 – Lack of explanation, huge leaps in the plot that came out of nowhere, and flat characterizations made this a real chore
Hero	3/10 – Definitely alpha, but lacks any kind of depth to make him interesting
Heroine	4/10 – Without knowing more about who she was or why anything was important to her, she’s just a figure on a chase
Entertainment value	3/10 – Sloppy plotting and poor characterizations make this memorable for all the wrong reasons
World building	4/10 – In spite of an intriguing beginning, any sense of time and place is sacrificed for the sex
TOTAL:	18/50

Sea of Suspicion by Toni Anderson

TITLE: Sea of Suspicion
AUTHOR: Toni Anderson
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 84k)
GENRE: Romantic suspense
COST: $5.39

Twelve years ago, Nick Archer buried the wife he’d kicked out after she cheated on him, convinced it was murder not an accident. In the time since, he’s done everything he can to bring her killer to justice, to no avail. The death of another graduate student prompts a new murder investigation, but Nick has a new distraction – marine biologist Susie Cooper. She’s taken a job at the Gatty Marine Lab, eager to prove herself as more than the daughter of a rising American politician, and while she might not necessarily think the best of her boss, she’s not as convinced as DI Archer that he’s a murderer. She’s especially not convinced acting on her attraction to Nick will do either one of them any good…

I might not fall head over heels with every Carina title I read, but the vast majority of them have been solidly written and worth what I paid. This one just further cements my growing regard for this publisher.

Marine biologist Susie Cooper has started a new job at the Gatty Marine Lab, eager to make her mark. Her mother is about to seek the presidential nomination back in the US, but Susie has no desire to ride on her famous coattails. Intelligent and resourceful in her own right, she takes a firm hand with her graduate students, one of which turns out to be the sister-in-law of Detective Inspector Nick Archer. Nick keeps a close eye on the Gatty, ever since his dead wife cheated on him with her advisor, the same man who has now hired Susie. Nick has always believed Jake killed her, an obsession that drove him into police work as well as cost him any kind of permanent relationships. Susie lives next to Nick’s in-laws, as well as advises his sister-in-law, but their paths cross even more when another female student at the Gatty ends up dead. Susie and Nick fight their attraction, both dealing with their angst-ridden pasts, while Nick does everything he can to prove Jake is responsible for both deaths. Neither initiative proves easy.

The prologue shows the funeral of Nick’s dead wife, providing hints of the angst and conflict to come. The story then jumps twelve years into the future, introducing the reader to Susie and her environment at the Gatty. To the world, Susie comes off as a bit of an ice princess, an image she’s actually okay with as she struggles against the baggage of her mother’s job as an American politician about to make a bid for the presidential nomination. She’s smart enough to hope to gain recognition in her own right, and there are hints of what she went through when she was younger to explain why she’s so reluctant to get involved. Meeting Nick throws her senses into a tailspin, but she’s determined to resist him. Nick, on the other hand, is willing to use that attraction to get what he needs from her at the start in order to try and get evidence against Jake. It’s a complicated relationship, made even more so by their tumultuous pasts and the fact that neither is willing to forgive themselves for the wrongs of their histories. In the grand scheme of things, while the characters themselves are three-dimensional and fascinating, their budding romance is likely the weakest aspect of this novel. They spend ample time together, and there’s a lot of reflection on how and why they do and don’t work together, but the revelations that spark their ultimate commitment seemed to come out of the blue. I finished the story more convinced they’d have a really good sexual relationship for a little while, but not that it would last.

The romance, however, is probably the only aspect that doesn’t shine. The world in which the characters inhabit is brought strikingly to life. The author has firsthand knowledge of the setting as well as marine biology, and that ends up translating into a sharp realism that heightens the growing sense of danger, primarily because it’s so easy to believe in it. Coupled with that is a massive cast of characters that sport a wide variety of personalities, each one rich and developed. I was particularly impressed with Nick’s partner, a detective struggling to balance his job and caring for his ailing wife (who in turn gets her own incredibly moving scene). They provide a wonderful counterbalance to Nick’s more cynical nature, and serves to heighten the themes of family and devotion that permeate the entire book.

The mystery/suspense clips along at a solid pace. Just when I thought I had it figured out, it would twist in another direction, though the final reveal both surprised me and made complete sense. The climax isn’t quite as intense as I think it was meant to be, but that’s primarily because of a bit of telegraphing that occurred in its onset that ended up making portions feel redundant and repetitive. The last chapter drags more than any other in the novel, but that is because it’s all about Susie and Nick, and I just didn’t buy it completely. I enjoyed everything that came before it enough to compensate, though. If you enjoy tightly written suspense with a diverse cast of characters, this one just might be for you.

Readability	9/10 – Utterly engrossing and intelligently written
Hero	8/10 – Fighting against his angst-filled past, strong and intelligent
Heroine	8/10 – Some of her insecurities felt a little too much but just as strong and resourceful as the hero
Entertainment value	8/10 – Tightly written suspense that wasn’t always as predictable as it could’ve been with a secondary cast that leapt from the page
World building	9/10 – Scotland and the Gatty come to life; the author’s expertise is evident in every word
TOTAL:	42/50

Cross My Heart by Paris Brandon

TITLE: Cross My Heart
AUTHOR: Paris Brandon
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 25k)
GENRE: Contemporary suspense erotic romance
COST: $4.45

Six months ago, cop Jack Sutton asked Valentine Cross to marry him. She turned him down, and he walked away. Now, the case of a missing woman forces him to seek Val out again, as she is their best chance at finding the safe house the woman is likely at. He just has to hope she doesn’t throw him out when she sees him…

Though there was a lot of potential in this short novella, none of it is actually realized, much to my disappointment. The characters start off perfectly fine. In fact, the prologue where Jack meets Val, a liberal late-night radio talk show host, is crisp and hot. The first chapter then opens two years later, at which time Val and Jack have been broken up for six months. He asked her to marry him, and she flat-out refused. He stormed off, and the two haven’t seen each other since. Jack’s boss has a missing woman case that he’s being told to back off from, but something about it bothers him, and he wants Jack to follow up. Val has a direct line to the biggest safe house for battered women in the city, and Jack’s boss wants him to use his connection to her to find out if the missing woman is there. So Jack goes to see Val, wondering how long it’ll take for her to kick him to the curb this time.

Sounds fine, doesn’t it? And it is, for the most part. I liked the intensity these two displayed, both individually and then initially together. It hinted at some real heat as the story progressed. But Jack never brings up the issue about the missing woman, distracted by the fact that when he arrives, Val has had a break-in. He’s worried for her safety, and that worry somehow results in these two having a temporary truce/getting back together. His anxious feelings for her felt genuine, but honestly, I spent that whole time mistrusting his desire to get back with her. It felt like manipulation to get the information he wanted, rather than genuine need, in spite of his continuous assertions to the contrary. That ended up holding me back for the entire story.

None of it is helped by the fact that shortly into the story, it starts headhopping. Badly. Sometimes paragraph to paragraph. My tolerance for headhopping is low as it is, and this time, I just couldn’t handle it. It’s further hindered by the author’s propensity to tell rather than show, and the explanations that sometimes occur end up being more confusing than if she’d just shown us what happened rather than tell us after the fact. It weakens the suspense angle considerably (not to mention the fact that much of it feels forced and/or convenient). All the good ideas in the world aren’t enough to fix the poor story construction, even when the characters have some serious chemistry. I didn’t believe the resolution of any of the suspense storylines, and ultimately failed to engage with the author’s voice.

Readability	4/10 – The headhopping and telling not showing really wore me down
Hero	6/10 – I had real issues believing in his reunion when I knew the only reason he’d gone back to her
Heroine	6/10 – Strong, but too unwilling to bend for me to like very much
Entertainment value	4/10 – While there were some good ideas and lots of potential, it never lived up to any of them.
World building	6/10 – Though there were sporadic bits of painting their world, they never felt cohesive enough to give a good picture
TOTAL:	26/50

Moving Target by Rosalie Stanton

TITLE: Moving Target
AUTHOR: Rosalie Stanton
PUBLISHER: Lyrical Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Erotic romantic suspense
COST: $2.50

Wolf Thornton has a job – to kill Anna Winter. Someone powerful wants her dead, but the more he learns about her, the more convinced he is she’s not the threat she was made out to be. When other assassins show up to do the job he’s stalling in, he decides the game has changed. But protecting her just might cost both of them their lives…

My bad luck streak continues, though today’s review isn’t flawed for the same reasons as the last few books. It started out well enough, but halfway through, everything fell apart.

Anna Winter is recently unemployed, having lost her job in Washington, DC. She’s been forced to move back home to Springfield, Missouri, but what she doesn’t know is that someone has been hired to kill her. Assassin Wolf Thornton watches Anna for weeks before making his move, but it’s not the move to kill her. No, he doesn’t think she deserves to die, not after everything he’s witnessed. His move is more personal, because Anna intrigues him as no other woman has in a very long time. It’s cut short, however, when another assassin shows up to finish the job he hasn’t done, only now, Wolf isn’t going to let that happen.

This short novella starts out well enough. Wolf is sympathetic, and his confusion about Anna and his assignment realistic, based on what we see of her. There’s even a certain amount of sympathy to be had for Anna when we get into her POV, though I found her whiny almost from the start. She’s very “woe is me” about everything that is wrong with her life, and she seems reluctant to do anything that will make it better. Wolf sweeps her off her feet in a club, and they have a lot of chemistry on the dance floor, enough to give me hope this will work out, even if it isn’t very long. That hope prevails during the following action sequence, too, when they flee Springfield to try and keep Anna safe.

Then, things start to unravel. It starts with Anna. I already didn’t care for her a lot because of her negative attitude about everything, but my opinion deteriorated during the course of her various conversations with Wolf. In one word? Inconsistent. She worked doing glorified admin work for the Secretary of Agriculture, and displays intricate knowledge of how the political system works, and yet she think Quebec is a country. I think her dimness is meant to be endearing, but when it’s juxtaposed against obvious intelligence, it makes her look either flaky or inconsistent. I’m going with the latter. Because there’s repeated incidents of this throughout the story, enough for me really not like her by the story’s end.

Wolf’s not much better. There’s a lot of banter between the two that I’m sure is meant to make him look charming, but honestly, he comes across like an ass more than half the time. His propensity for pet names, as well as singing his own praises, is eyeroll-worthy rather than seductive, and the good will he’d garnered from me in the beginning dissipated.

If the assassin plot was any good, I might be willing to overlook these shortcomings, but ultimately, the conspiracy around why Anna is being hunted is unnecessarily convoluted for a short novella as well as downright silly in a few parts. Worse, it doesn’t even get resolved onscreen. Anna does something she could (should) have done weeks earlier, makes a phone call, and poof! Problem solved. It’s lazy storytelling and emotionally unsatisfying, and none of it encourages me to try this author again.

Readability	7/10 – The dialogue didn’t flow well, and the sex felt manipulative, but the opening and action scene held promise
Hero	5/10 – Inconsistent and often the opposite of charming
Heroine	3/10 – Even more inconsistent than the hero
Entertainment value	4/10 – Though the opening held promise, the story’s too short for the plot it tries to convey
World building	6/10 – Moments are well realized, but the greater picture is grainy and unclear
TOTAL:	25/50

Criminal Instinct by Kelly Lynn Parra

TITLE: Criminal Instinct
AUTHOR: Kelly Lynn Parra
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 89k)
GENRE: Romantic suspense
COST: $5.99

When she gets busted, Ana Moreno has a choice – go to prison or join a covert government group that busts drug dealers. She takes the job. Six months in, her life is still not on her own, but she’s making the most of it. Their latest assignment is to discover who is behind a huge shipment about to arrive in the Bay Area, and when it arrives so they can stop it. Ana is tasked with getting information on one of their suspects, the dangerous right hand man Jonas Saven, but their meeting sparks a series of events that will change Ana’s life forever…

Know what’s heartening? Buying your first book from a new publisher and getting a winner. Granted, this one has the Harlequin machine behind it, and I’m not naïve enough to believe it won't have its share of losers, but it’s still a good feeling to know it was okay to trust Carina this first time.

The story is a dense one, and little I can say will help clear it up without spoiling the reader too much. Ana is twenty-one and been an outsider all of her life. Half Mexican, half Caucasian, she’s never been able to fit in with any of the families she was placed in while in foster care. She’s never been comfortable in her own skin at all. Becoming a thief gave her control she didn’t otherwise have, and it’s really no surprise that she eventually got caught. She takes the offer to join SIDE, a covert government operation that uses cons to rat out and dig up intel on drug dealers for the purpose of busting them, and becomes one of this ragtag group of young offenders. Their newest assignment promises to be a big bust if they can pull it off. She gets tasked to find out about one of the smaller dealers, only to stumble right into the path of one of their prime suspects, Jonas Saven. Jonas has the air of legitimacy around him with all his various businesses, but everybody keeps telling Ana he’s the one behind the upcoming shipment. However, she’s attracted to him like she’s never been attracted to anybody else, and it’s tough to keep distance.

I loved Ana. She is the heart and soul of this story, even when it switches POV to Jonas, the bad guy, or any of the other SIDE members. She is tough and almost brittle, but there’s an unexpected vulnerability that pops through time and time again. She will always fight, even when she knows she’s outgunned, and she’s smart enough to win a good part of the time. She harbors an incredible amount of anger, though, which proves to be her downfall more than once. But in spite of it all, she is the reason I invested in this story as much as I did, unable to put it down, unwilling to stop until I saw it through to the end.

The writing helps that. The action is nonstop, the violence nearly constant, the emotions always just below the surface. Much like Ana. It was almost exhausting to read, but that might be because I read it in a single sitting. I couldn’t stop. The threat was always right there, and it felt too tenuous to put the book aside, even though I knew I could always come back to it. The level of detail creates a world that’s gritty and completely in your face, defying you to pretend it’s not real.

The other characters in this are expertly drawn, though I’ll admit I didn’t completely buy into the HEA. Jonas is quite the playboy before he meets Ana, and – surprise, surprise – she’s not his typical female type at all. I’m never quite given enough reason to believe he’s going to completely change his ways for her, though I certainly believed her response to him. The scene where each comes clean about their past, however, was tender, heartwrenching, and evocative. I just wish the stuff that came immediately afterward hadn’t spoiled the effect for me a little.

Still, this book qualifies as a keeper. If Carina ever expands into offering their books in print as well, I’ll order a copy of this for my shelves. And I’ll be on the lookout for other work by this author. I can see from her website she does YA, which unfortunately doesn’t interest me at all. But if she’s going to continue with adult titles as well, I’ll be right in line to buy.

Readability	9/10 – Dense with action, terse and vivid, almost exhausting in pace
Hero	7/10 – Sexy, enigmatic, and loyal
Heroine	9/10 – Tough and heartbreakingly vulnerable, all at the same time
Entertainment value	8/10 – I didn’t completely buy into the HEA, but the nonstop action and my love for the heroine makes this a keeper
World building	9/10 – Gritty and in your face
TOTAL:	42/50

Old Poison by Josh Lanyon

TITLE: Old Poison
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 33k)
GENRE: Gay erotic romantic suspense
COST: $4.99

Will and Taylor are learning how to be partners, both at work and in private. Taylor is about to return to active duty, but his assignment to someone else creates friction in their still fledgling relationship, friction neither man needs as Will struggles to get a grip on his feelings and Taylor finds himself the target of a stalker…

I rarely re-read stories in preparation for reading sequels, though this time, I wonder if I should have made an exception. I’ve read the first story about Will and Taylor exactly once, and it was a little while ago, so the dynamics of their relationship were impressions rather than specifics. I seriously wonder if I would have liked the story more than I did had I done that.

Will and Taylor have been lovers for a little more than a month, and each is still feeling their way. Taylor wants Will to move in, a move Will resists, and still occasionally wonders if Will is with him out of guilt rather than real emotion. For his part, Will wonders if the relationship he gave up when Taylor was shot, a relationship with a man he has a lot more in common with, is the one he should have pursued, even if his feelings for Taylor are far more urgent. Taylor is going back on active duty, but assigned to a new partner, while Will is assigned to the man he broke up with to be with Taylor on an entirely different case. Their lives are moving apart, directions that leave both men questioning. And all the while, someone appears to be stalking Taylor.

Will and Taylor’s relationship has never been simple, and this continuation of their romance is no exception. This aspect is probably the strongest single part of the story. Sometimes, their doubts are played a little heavy-handedly, but they’re organic to the characters and thus, satisfying. They take up most of the first half of the story, while the latter is more tightly focused on the suspense. It’s this schism that provides the primary drawback I have with it, keeping it from something outstanding to a merely solid offering from Lanyon.

As a whole, the story never completely flowed for me. Elements of the suspense get introduced sporadically in the first half, enough to make its fruition logical. When the action takes off, it erupts like a rocket, moving at a breakneck speed through the last third. It’s so tight that the contrast with the rest of the book is jarring. In some ways, it feels like two different stories. Truth be told, I much preferred this last section of the story to the rest of it. If the entire thing had been written and paced like that, this would have rated much higher. Still, the ending works on a lot of levels, primarily due to the events at the end of the novella. Lanyon gets full props for pulling it all together, and seeing the happy ending these two men get was vastly rewarding.

Readability	8/10 – Oddly paced for the first half, though the second makes up for it
Hero #1	7/10 – I missed Taylor’s humor from the first book, though circumstances dictated it
Hero #2	7/10 – His emotional growth is smoother than Taylor’s
Entertainment value	7/10 – I didn’t enjoy this as much as the first book, but it’s definitely a solid offering from Lanyon
World building	8/10 – Each agent’s case and world get brought to life, as well as the suspense angle
TOTAL:	37/50

In Hot Pursuit by Kate McMurray

TITLE: In Hot Pursuit
AUTHOR: Kate McMurray
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 59k)
GENRE: Gay erotic romantic suspense
COST: $6.99

In the closet NYC cop Noah Tobin is burned out. The stress of his lover’s death – a death he feels responsible for, a death he couldn’t even mourn for publicly – has taken its toll, and now, his boss is sending him to Florida for a mandatory vacation. His first night in Tampa, Noah tries out a gay bar, but when the man who picks him up shows up on the news the next day as missing, he knows he has to report what he knows. The trouble starts when the man shows up again, beaten and bruised, and his best chance at staying alive is for Noah to keep an eye on him…

What starts out as a tense exploration of grief with a potential suspense plot ends up being a white-washed gay cop story I can’t help but wish was better. The story begins with Noah at his dying lover’s bedside. He’s had to sneak around for years, lie to get into the hospital, and was the actual target of the bullet that shot his lover. His emotions are wrenching and palpable, and it’s a strong way to get the reader involved. Cut to eighteen months later. He’s burned out, he’s finally seeing his lover’s murderer get the verdict he deserves, and his lieutenant is worried about him. Noah gets shipped off on vacation, ending up in Tampa. He goes to a gay bar, gets hit on by a gorgeous, slightly older man, and has sex for the first time since his lover’s death. His pick-up is actually Harry Knowles, a well-known gay entrepreneur in the region. Harry shows up on the news the next day as missing, Noah goes in with what he knows, and he slowly gets sucked into the investigation. Harry shows up later with a story about getting kidnapped. When it’s obvious his life is still in danger, Noah is tasked with protecting him.

This is where it starts to go downhill for me. Getting time to spend together should be an ideal opportunity to give Harry more depth, right? Except it never shows up. Harry never evolves beyond the entrepreneur/playboy he was when he was introduced, and I fail to understand what it is that Noah sees in him, other than he’s good-looking and generous. Noah has been too careful for too many years, and he’s seen guys like Harry before. And he doesn’t feel many qualms about the fact Harry condones drug use in his clubs? Harry even draws a small profit from it, though he does try to play up the fact that it’s just a token amount. I never understood what it was about Harry that made Noah turn a blithe eye to all the ideals he held for so long. Good sex, sure. I can see that. Harry’s an attractive guy and Noah hasn’t had any in eighteen months. But love? No, I just can’t see it.

The other drawback to this stems from the roles these two play within the structure of the suspense plot. Harry is in danger, hence being in hiding. By the very nature of what they must do to keep Harry safe, Noah and Harry are outside of the action a great deal of the time. Things happen around them, but rarely to them (though when they do, there’s glimpses of what the story could have been, if they hadn’t been closeted away for most of the story). It slows down the pace drastically, and makes it very easy to lose interest by halfway through the book. It got to the point where I just wanted to skim over all of Harry and Noah’s intimate scenes. I’d already had enough of those, and was hungry for something real to actually occur.

In the end, I was simply disappointed. There was real potential in the first part of the story, but the follow through just never occurred.

Readability	7/10 – Though mostly clean, shallow characterization of one of the heroes and the on the sidelines nature of much of the action slowed it down
Hero #1	7/10 – I’m not sure I buy how easy it was for Noah to be open in Florida when he wasn’t in NYC, but at least he had some depth to him
Hero #2	4/10 – Though a generally likeable character, there was very little there to make me believe or understand why he would fall so easily for Noah
Entertainment value	6/10 – It started out well, but as it became clear Harry’s characterization wouldn’t deepen and that they would be sidelined a good deal of the time, I got bored.
World building	7/10 – Though there are enough details for internal scenes, there’s a serious dearth of color for external ones
TOTAL:	31/50

Final Words by Teri Thackston

TITLE: Final Words
AUTHOR: Teri Thackston
PUBLISHER: Cerridwen Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 92k)
GENRE: Paranormal romantic suspense
COST: $6.99

A hit and run sends Dr. Emma St. Clair to the hospital, where she dies not once, but twice. Nine weeks later, she returns to work at the mortuary, only to discover that now she can talk to the people on her table. It’s unnerving to say the least. She already thinks she’s losing her mind. But when information she learns helps solve a case, she wonders if there’s more to it. Detective Jason MacKenzie has been trying to solve her hit and run to no avail. Getting more information from the pretty doctor seems to be the key. But she’s put off by his playboy reputation, and the fact that she seems to know things about his cases that she shouldn’t? Doesn’t make it easy to act on his attraction…

Though seeing dead people has been done repeatedly, I was interested enough in the blurb and excerpt to give this a try. I’m glad I did. Though there’s nothing that screams, “Ohmigod, best book ever!” it’s a solid romantic suspense, with very little that’s actually wrong with it.

The story starts in the ER, with Emma dying, and then being brought back to life, after a hit and run. Her emotions are right there on the surface, and the tension thick from the start. Jason is assigned to the case, because the other person in the crash was a very good friend of his. He’s got an affinity for hit and runs, actually. His sister was killed in one, and the fact that her killer has never been found haunts him to this day. Emma is revived, and the story cuts to nine weeks later, when she’s about to return to work as a coroner. She is going out of her mind with so little to do, and though she’s still a little traumatized by the entire accident, feels like throwing herself back into her old life is the best way to go. She’s entirely unprepared, both physically and emotionally, for having the very first body she works on appear as a ghost in front of her, telling her how she died. It throws Emma into a tailspin, one Jason witnesses, but his attraction to her, and his need to get at what she knows, is too high for him to look the other way.

This starts a long, steadily if not spectacularly paced tale about coming to grips with loss, accepting self identities, and learning to see what’s actually there as opposed to what is only assumed to be, both in the living and the dead. Emma is the strong core to this. Her reactions are realistic, fragile and fearful when she doesn’t know what’s going on, with growing power as the story progresses. She doubts her sanity more than once, and it’s palpable. But it’s helped because at heart, Emma is a decent, strong-willed person, dedicated to doing the right thing. She has a jerk of an ex-husband she’s trying to deal with, she’s got this new ability, and she’s got Jason to juggle. Except for a couple moments of, “Seriously? You don’t see how dumb that is?” (which is almost inevitable with heroines in any kind of romantic suspense), I liked and respected her a lot.

Jason is just as strong. He has the same moral code, the same dedication. His is a little more driven, however, because of his haunted past. His sister’s death changed him, and though his playboy reputation lingers, he’s not actually like that anymore. He’s foregone most relationships except professional ones for two years. Emma has every right to be nervous about his interest, but through careful, deliberate plotting and pacing, they both discover they are not who the other thinks they are.

The romance takes a back seat for much of the story in favor of the emotional journeys both characters go on, and the suspense aspects, though when it does finally happen, it’s rich and vibrant. The only thing is, it takes a while to get there. For a suspense novel, it’s not swiftly paced at all. There’s a methodical feel to the first half of it, as all the pieces are being put in place and the characters’ psyches are explored. It accelerates quite a bit once Emma starts getting a firmer grip on her abilities, but this would never be considered fast-paced. I didn’t mind so much, though I think it might prove troublesome for suspense readers who are more accustomed to swifter rides. To me, it felt like a fantastic mirror to the growth the characters showed, characters I considered well worth spending the time with.

Readability	8/10 – A slower pace might prove difficult for some, but I thought the more deliberate tempo an excellent reflection on the characters
Hero	8/10 – An appealing mix of driven and wounded
Heroine	8/10 – Her tenuous grasp on reality is grounded with a real sense of decency and sheer will
Entertainment value	8/10 – Solid and just a little spooky, though more suspense than romance
World building	8/10 – For having the paranormal elements in such a normal world, it felt remarkably genuine
TOTAL:	40/50

Mr. Charming by Nancy J. Parra

TITLE: Mr. Charming
AUTHOR: Nancy J. Parra
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 58k)
GENRE: Romantic suspense
COST: $6.00

When her cop brother shows up on Jennifer Sumner’s doorstep requesting her help, she can’t turn him down...even though it means hiding playboy Kane McCormick in her home. The world thinks Kane is dead, but when it becomes clear the explosion meant to kill him was deliberately set, all he wants is to find the person responsible. The last thing he expects is to fall for the single mother keeping him safe in the interim…

Romantic suspense is a tricky genre. It’s very difficult to build smart suspense without sacrificing the characters, and still finding time to create a romance. This short novel from Wild Rose fails on all three counts.

Divorced Jennifer Sumner is a talk show psychologist, raising her son in suburbia, working out of her basement, all in a semblance of hiding away from the tabloids that tore into her when her marriage fell apart. Kane McCormick is a playboy who should have died in a plane crash, and now, thanks to Jennifer’s brother, is hiding out in her house while the cops try and figure out the truth. Their attraction is immediate. While I had hopes at the start, it fizzled quickly as both characters failed to gain any sort of depth. In Jennifer’s case, her behaviors became so annoying and idiotic, I genuinely loathed her.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a heroine who was just so genuinely Too Stupid to Live. When it becomes clear that the killer has found them, her actions become so ridiculous, I almost wished she’d get found and put out of my misery. She’s a single mother, the sole caretaker of a six-year-old boy. Yet, when their lives are threatened, when they are almost caught in an explosion of their own and in fact have to be checked out by EMTs because they are so close to it, does she proceed to do everything she can to protect him? No. When her brother and Kane insist she needs to go into a safe house, she stamps her foot and refuses, stating she refuses to take her son out of his normal routine. Forget that her son has just witnessed someone get blown up. Forget the fact that she’s supposedly this amazing psychologist and yet doesn’t even consider that her child might be even a little bit afraid because of everything that’s been going on. She has to literally be carried out of her own house, even after her own six-year-old comes to her with a packed bag because he sees the wisdom in hiding more than she can. I suppose someone might argue that after she'd been hounded by the tabloids/press during her divorce, she'd be skittish about any kind of exposure, but come on. Exposure versus a killer who has made it clear your son is in danger? How is that even comparable? It's not, if the woman is any kind of a decent mother. She wants to protect her child, then she damn well better do it.

I won’t even touch on how adamant she is against casual sex and relationships, and yet decides she’s in love with Kane barely two days into his stay, with nothing more happening between them than a little bit of flirting and small touches.

Kane’s not stupid, but he is entirely flat. The secondary characters are richer than he is, including the little boy. The story isn’t helped by the suspense getting telegraphed early on. Why the author feels the need to repeat a great deal of what occurred during the villain’s expositional scenes in the dialogue of the climax is beyond me.

In the end, I just can’t recommend this. Even if Jennifer didn’t come across as a self-centered, frigid idiot, the lack of any depth or complexity in either the plot or the characters keep it from being even marginally satisfying.

Readability	7/10 – Simplistic suspense and unexpected instances of headhopping mar clean prose
Hero	4/10 – Lacks any kind of depth
Heroine	2/10 – Almost defines too stupid to live
Entertainment value	3/10 – Hated the heroine, couldn’t understand how they could fall in love, and even more reasons not to like this
World building	6/10 – Only the suburbia part of it felt in any way real
TOTAL:	22/50