Review: 4.5 stars, an enthralling "capture" romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 11, 2013
I would rate A Reluctant Companion 4.5 stars.A century after a solar storm wipes out all electronics and millions of people die from famine and disease, life still has not returned to normal. Electricity is still in short supply, only limited services are available, and transportation is by horse or steam-powered trains. But life is still pretty good for the elite, including Tiernan Archer who rules the Seattle territory of the United States. A handsome man of power, he has his pick of women. In exchange for their sexual services as his “personal companion,” he provides them with a generous “golden parachute” when he tires of them.When he spots virginal Madison Cole, he takes a liking to her and summons her. But she doesn’t want to become his personal companion and leave her family, their winery, and her ailing mother behind in Yakima to move with him to Seattle. But he forces her to.It’s a rocky start to a relationship. But despite her objection to his tyrannical ways, she is attracted to him and they fall in love with each other. However, love comes easier than trust, and when Madison becomes the unwilling pawn in a plot to overthrow Tiernan, she discovers she has reason to be wary of such a powerful man.A Reluctant Companion offers a roller coaster of suspenseful moments, including a major dip about 2/3 of the way through that I never saw coming. This book kept me on the edge of my seat. The characters were engaging and likable and the story creative and spell-binding.So why 4.5 of 5 stars? There were a few “errors in logic” in close proximity early on that bumped me out of the story. First the author says  Melissa lives in a house (with a vineyard and winery) with her family that her grandparents built 100 years before The End “after striking it rich” in the stock market. Later, the author says that Melissa lives in a two-room house that does not have a bathtub (and by implication a shower). Really? The grandparents who “hit it rich” only built a two-room house without indoor bathing facilities? That doesn’t make sense.When Tiernan explains to Melissa why electricity is so scarce he says it’s because The End killed 100 million people in the United States, creating a lack of people who understood how manufacturing and power plants worked. Here’s the thing: 100 million is a lot of people. BUT, the population of the US is 300 million—which means that 2/3 of the people survived. So two thirds of the doctors, the firemen, the nurses, the teachers AND the power and manufacturing plant workers remained. With a century of time, surely they would have made better progress. In short, I did not buy the reasoning.Given the devastation that occurred, I would have liked to have seen more attention given to the setting. It occurs in Seattle, but the reader does not get to “see” the city.  What does Seattle look like now? The only thing mentioned was Pike Place Market. What about Pioneer Square? The underground city? Mt. Rainier? The Space Needle? The latter is pictured on the cover, but is never mentioned.Once I could get past those blips, I enjoyed the story. I would definitely recommend A Reluctant Companion as an enthralling, dystopian sci-fi "capture" romance.