Review: Taut, action-packed romantic suspense that keeps you on edge
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 9, 2012
4.5 stars. Excellent romantic suspense tale about a war photographer with PTSD and a man she's not sure she can trust. Journalist Julie Larson goes for a jog in Central Park and stumbles into the middle of a murder in progress. When one of the men involved takes her hostage, she finds that the man is actually trying to protect her from the other man involved in the murder. He lets her go, but shows up later at her apartment badly injured and in need of help. She reluctantly assists him, and as they get to know each other, she learns that he is not exactly what he seems... nor is the handsome police detective who keeps nosing around.When the murderer from the park makes another attempt on her, and she is saved by the intervention of her mystery man, Julie learns that she's stumbled into a vast conspiracy, and her only hope to survive it is to trust a man who refuses to tell her the full truth for fear of what will happen to her if she knows.I really enjoyed this book. Tight writing, twists and turns galore, characters who were well-fleshed out and real, a mystery to keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat. I don't normally like romance novels written in the first person because I like to get inside the heads of both leads, but the structure of the story worked with us only being in Julie's head. I think I might have loved the book even more if I'd been inside the hero's head as well, but I enjoyed it as it was. The action scenes were taut and carried a real punch, and I felt every blow the characters took.The story did get a touch convoluted at times, and I had a hard time remembering some of the peripheral characters, so I had to back-track occasionally to figure out who they were when they were mentioned (Houston is one example). And the climax had the talking villain willing to explain all because "ha ha you're going to die anyway" and I would have liked something a little different there. But that's a minor drawback. I also didn't quite buy the reason that Julie was targeted by this conspiracy in the first place; it seemed like a bit of a stretch. However, the villains in the story were creepy and I was quite happy to see all of them get what they deserved.Overall, I really enjoyed the book and will definitely be picking up the rest of this series to see how it evolves.