Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsA solid and competent book, but others are over-hyping it to its disadvantage
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2015
I enjoyed this book well enough but it seems others found it a lot more interesting than I did.
It kept my interest well enough to keep reading and finish but I was never so caught up in it I couldn't put it down to get a cup of tea, and I never got involved to the point that I felt any tension. A thriller is supposed to provide some tension at some point, so that was a little disappointing.
The hero character worked, the heroine mostly worked. The plot was sound - I didn't have to put up with inane plot contortions designed to "force" the two characters together into a romance - thank you Sandra, thank you so much. That rubbish always gets on my nerves, and is one of the biggest reasons I avoid most romance (and John Ringo novels). The sexual attraction and tension grew out of what was happening, without taking over the story and the behaviour of both characters rang true for the most part.
I wouldn't have minded some more action, and a bit more grit to the action there was. But this is where I think the problem with genre creep comes in - no thriller reader would comment, like one reviewer, that there was too much violence. That was a romance reader straying too far from their comfort zone. I, on the other hand, am a thriller reader and there was not quite enough "thrill" for my taste.
Depending how you look at it, Ms Brown got it right as a cross-genre novel, or didn't quite get it right for either.
Strangely enough it was the ending - the one that seems to have annoyed so many people? - that I appreciated most. Up until that point it had been predictable and even bland in parts - but that ending lifted the overall tone of the book for me.
It is possible that Ms Brown is on the verge of moving from "romance with some thriller" to "thriller" and is temporarily at a stage where neither genre group is fully satisfied. I have not read enough of her novels to know. If she does move to straight thriller, I think they will be more to my taste. In fact as I write this I am hoping she does and I find myself looking forward to what she might come up with.
I will read another Sandra Brown book, maybe even another couple, looking for books of hers with more of that feeling at the end of the book.
