Review: Not enough romance...
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 24, 2011
This book was too depressing and didn't feel like a romance novel. Before I scare you away, let me assure you that it has a HEA so this is technically a romance. Unfortunately, I didn't get it.Detective Inspector James McBride's life is a mess and he doesn't know how to fix it. He's forty years old, divorced and not quite at peace with his sexuality. On the professional front, things don't look good either: his current undercover assignment has him pretending to be an alcoholic and gambling addict in order to infiltrate and bust a human-trafficking ring, but not all the drinking he's been doing lately is exactly necessary to do his job. Needless to say, he ends up blowing his cover and is taken off the case.Reassigned to look after the visiting Israeli ambassador, which is a constable's job and thus unworthy of his rank, McBride feels an instant connection with Tobias Leitner, the leader of the Israeli security team. McBride should know better than to get involved with Toby, who's still recovering from the death of his partner and lover, but fate, in the form of an unexpected brush with death and the kidnapping of McBride's daughter Gracie, conspires to get them together. Can they rescue Gracie, defeat the bad guys, survive to tell the story, and heal one another's heart in the process?Phew, this was not a light read! The story had a dark tone and none of the characters was particularly nice. I didn't like McBride, I didn't get to know Toby well enough to either like or dislike him, and as a result, I didn't care about their relationship. I liked the action scenes, but I don't read romances for them.The plot was too complex to fit the constraints of a novella, and that affected the development of McBride and Toby's romance. In fact, I felt that the focus of the story was McBride's downfall and recovery, and his relationship with Toby was just an afterthought. If I had to classify this book following the rules I know, I'd have to create a new genre: women's fiction with a male character as protagonist. As I'm not a fan of women's fiction and having a man as protagonist makes no difference to me, this book failed to grab me.