Review: Difficult to rate: was 2 1/2 stars for me personally - but if you like fluff and easy; it's 3 1/2 stars
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 15, 2013
Caleb is a DEA agent who is assigned to watching (surveillance) a possible suspect. The suspect (or person of interest) is Marley, who just recently discovered that her live-in boyfriend is a drug dealer and murderer. The DEA is still looking for him and suspect that he will return to Marley's home, or attempt to contact her.Marley is a beautiful, sexy, independent nurse who is still reeling from this misjudgement of character. Her emotional walls are now up.Caleb finds himself attracted to the woman whom he has been watching.The attraction between Caleb and Marley is quick and go to red hot from there.This book is predictable from page one.This formulaic romance novel provides the following:- sexy, hunky, brave male lead- gorgeous, sexy, independent female lead- dangerous antagonist that puts the heroine in danger- hot steamy sex scenes (ugh - just read the book and I can't remember how many - not many, but enough)- hero must rescue heroine from dangerous villain- love too powerful to deny; hero and heroine 'heal' each other and have sex and live HEA- No cliff hangerI think the reason I couldn't like this book more is that it was overly formulaic, too predictable and had no depth.I really enjoy Elle Kennedy's books - but I think the Harlequin books are too fluffy for me.For example, there is  scene where the villain kidnaps an older woman and has tied her up. The evil, nefarious, dangerous villain's nature just doesn't come across the pages. There should be more description of how dangerous he is by describing how callous he is with his kidnapped victim, etc. Instead he rants to himself (so the reader can understand how he is feeling) and he ends up sounding petulant and whiny instead of dangerous and unstable.Also, the storyline was just silly at times. What DEA agent would risk such an important case by sleeping with the woman that is under surveillance?Caleb was dying to capture the bad guy, but the case could be totally jeopardized when he ends up in bed with Marley. Didn't work for me.Also, the author tries to get the reader to feel that the heroine is also being victimized by the local police because they don't believe that she's innocent. That also didn't work.If the characters were written with more depth, and the situations were also written to give more real emotions to them; this novel would have been much better for me.Like going to a 5-star restaurant and ordering the 3-layer German chocolate layer cake, and ending up with a slice of a single-layer of regular chocolate cake. The single-layer chocolate cake can be good, good enough. But you were hoping/expected. for the 3-layer German chocolate layer cake (just finished reading 2 of Ms. Kennedy's books that I liked so much better). It is fine, but just doesn't really hit the spot. So it leaves you a bit disappointed, but you don't feel like you can really complain too much since you got some chocolate...Okay, not sure if that analogy made any sense at all!But summary:- plot was okay- characters were nice, likeable, sexy and fine- glad to get a HEA- glad it had no cliffhanger- glad it had a sex scene or two- glad it had no major angst going on ; and the 'lie' that Caleb tells to Marley, then gets revealed later, the big 'forgive' scene doesn't last too long. Hate when those drag on.- villain was okayIf you want easy, predictable, fluffy novel - this will work for you.I just don't have any desire to read books like this anymore, it worked when I was a teenager sneaking into my sister's romance novel collection; but not as an adult. Need more depth now.