Review: Read the Rainbow Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 7, 2014
Partners – 4 starsA very promising start to a very promising series. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the story. I'm biased to stories where partners are completely different both in backgrounds and personalities alike. It's very interesting to see how their relationships evolve.In Partners, we have a man who buries his past and his pain in anonymous sex with nameless one-night-stands or targets he's supposed to get intel from - Ian.  On the opposite pole, we have a man who closes himself off so much that he refuses any intimate contact and suffers from so much paranoia that he carries his weapons on him at all times - Travis.Both Ian and Travis have been given very complex background stories. However I felt that, despite how very thoroughly constructed their stories were, they let go too easily on their traumas and accepted the present without putting much of a fight. With how complex their pasts were, I expected a lot more angst than I got.Furthermore, the way their bosses team up to get them in a relationship was hilarious, but unrealistic (not that that takes away from the story, but I felt the need to mention it for those who are obsessed with realism in stories). In 90% of the cases, bosses reinforce the rule of no relationships with coworkers. Taking into account that they both work for a governmental agency, one would expect this rule to be severely applicable. However, in Partners, the opposite happens, and, even though the authors come up with a motivation for the bosses' attitude towards Ian and Travis' relationship, I still find it extremely unlikely. On the other hand, wouldn't the conflict have been enhanced if they had to hide their attraction from their superiors? I wondered why the authors didn't want to take advantage of that prospect. Maybe they thought this had been written too many times before. But you know what? Most of the times there's a reason why certain clichés work.Either way, in terms of enjoyment, Partners definitely is worth a ten out of ten: it's cute, pretty funny at times, and, what I liked most was the prolonging of the sexual tension between characters, which culminated with a hell of an awesome sex scene. In terms of realism, however, I think it could have been better constructed. All in all though, this series will be a great one. I'm looking forward to Ian and Travis' first field mission.