Review: Definitely NOT for everyone
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 28, 2013
C&D; is a romantic thriller that is definitely NOT for everyone. If you like traditional sweet romances or heroes that deep down are basically good, moral, decent upstanding men...then look elsewhere. If however you enjoy dark, morally ambiguous heroes who have done some genuinely bad things but have enough of a soul or shred of conscience left that they are capable of redemption...then you just hit the Mother lode.These are the type of stories that I enjoy the most and it is very hard to find the "real thing". In my quest I have been the victim of many a "bait and switch" scam where the hero turns out to have been wrongfully imprisoned, or actually NOT guilty of the bad reputation or working for some sort of government sanctioned agency for the good of national security which actually makes him the GOOD guy.Not C&D.; This is the real deal...FINALLY!!! The hero Michael, was recruited as a teenager from a gang and works for the IMA, which is described as "a group of mercenaries trained like soldiers with the moral code of assassins". Michael tortures people for information and then kills them and comes back covered in blood that isn't his own and the author shows this. The author also shows us that he has a shred of conscience left by contrasting his methods to those of his counterpart. Michael prefers to use "scare tactics and mild physical assault" he notes he tends to get "better results with the threat of torture rather than the actual act itself". Unlike his comrade Callaghan who has elevated torture and rape to an art form that brings him supreme satisfaction sexual and otherwise and leaves his captives so broken that they will tell him anything he wants to hear just to get him to stop.C&D; is the story of the beginning of Michael's redemption when he falls in love with his hostage and for the first time in his life experiences the desire to put someone else's life above his own. As a love story it is very realistically done, which means it is extremely slow to develop and by the end of the book Christina isn't at all sure about what she feels for him other than to know that she doesn't entirely still hate him. She has seen his vulnerability, she has seen the shred of conscience inside him spark, she is beginning to believe that he really does love her and she is beginning to have feelings for him - which are so hard for her to reconcile given that he has so many times done such very bad things, and given that some of those very bad things have been done to her.I thought C&D; was a thoroughly enjoyable story with very realistic relationship development. If there was not another installment I would have marked it down a star for cheating me of a HEA but I cannot wait to start Armed & Dangerous and I am over the moon to know that a 3rd installment is also promised. To the author...trilogies are overdone. You need to keep going!