Review: Mysterious Assignment on a Top Secret Base And a Distracting Assignment for the Scientist
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2013
Oh, this one just grabbed me from the start with its mysterious military installation and odd duty assignment for the heroine, Noel Casey.  Everything about the story stayed shadowy and mysterious until well over the halfway point.  I love that off-kelter feeling I get when I'm reading a nicely developing plot.The story opens with Lt. Noel Casey, a scientist, being assigned to a top secret base.  She soon learns that her assignment isn't for her role as a leading germ expert, but in her secondary degree as a psychologist.  She's been brought in to assess the battle readiness of a genetically altered human.  It is all odd from the start and the clues are starting to add up that she's involved in something that goes much deeper than she has been told.  The altered human, Killian, first draws her sympathy for the sterile life he has had living in a lab all his life, but there's something off about him even while she grows more and more attracted.  Killian is more than a lab experiment to her and she wants to be his friend and maybe something more if she's being honest with herself.  Then she encounters danger from being in an almost all male environment as well as a distraction in the friendly, but mysterious Lt. Russo.  And what's with the odd dreams and scary creatures in the forest?I know I was pretty vague with my plot summary, but I didn't want to spoil it for anyone.  Some stories really need to be experienced without undue influence and that's how I feel about much of this book.  Now there were moments once I was let in on the situation that the tension and mystery finally broke and I felt some lag from the need to get the explanation out.  At that point, the tension turned in another direction becoming more romance related not that there wasn't the slow build of romance in the beginning.  It just wasn't the only focal point.  I confess that this was a story where I was more enamored with the beginning three-fourths than the last.  I have trouble with love triangles so that's just on me and someone else might not mind so much.  I had a hard time shifting gears, but once I got onto the new plot path I was tracking along nicely- well until that startling last sentence.  I just sat there at 'the end' thinking, 'no, really?  we're going to end it now?'  It was the good sort of disappointment where I was vested in the story and didn't want it to end.  Definitely looking forward to the sequel.Those who enjoy Sci-Fi Romances with some baked in intrigue should give this one a go.