Review: Dark Pasts and a Fairy-Tale Island; can there be a HEA?
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 27, 2011
Landon is an unwilling mercenary working for underworld families.  He is under the thumb of his brutal older brothers, but is planning for his escape.  But he is captured on a mission to take Kirith Martinelli, the son of one family, at the request of a rival.  Landon hates that he has done bad things in his short life, but understands that he will probably deserve whatever is coming to him.  Kirith had been living peacefully on a tropical island with his young daughter, and Landon had been a part of an attempt to ruin all that.But Kirith is not a mob boss, even though his older brother most definitely is.  Once he sees that Landon is not just another hardened mercenary, he offers him a choice:  stay with him and do his bidding--even in bed-- for three months and then be free, or be sent off to captivity in the crueler hands of Kirith's underworld associates.This tale alternates between dark action and suspense and the very human wants and needs that exist in all people--the criminal and the more mundane.  The tropical island retreat is both a magical place and also a defended prison.  The characters, too, have their conflicting sides.  Here we have traumatic events and pasts and the hope that love can still somehow overcome it all.