One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Thriller/Suspense Romance
Series: Code Name, Book 3
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Length: 384 Pages, 251 KB
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle


Kit O'Holloran is a renowned dog trainer. She's currently working with four exceptional young dogs on her ranch in New Mexico. The pups are more exceptional than Kit realizes, though. Genetically and technologically enhanced superdogs, they're slated to be the next cutting edge weapons of the special Foxfire military unit. They're highly valuable and at the top of the top secret pile.

So is former Navy SEAL Wolfe Houston.

One of Foxfire's top operatives, he's just as technologically and genetically enhanced as the dogs and his skills far exceed normal human parameters. He's Kit's brother's best friend and he grew up with Kit, even spent some time living at the ranch with her and her brother Trace and their parents when they were kids. That's why, when a rogue operative gone way wrong escapes from captivity and heads towards New Mexico after the dogs, Wolfe is sent home to protect the dogs and catch the rogue agent, Cruz. Even if it means using the gorgeous and brave Kit as bait.

And no matter how much she stirs emotions he thought long dead.

This was my first experience with Skye's Foxfire books and I wonder if that may be part of the reason I had so many problems with this book. There wasn't enough world building or exposition to explain Foxfire or give me a good handle on the scope of the unit, nor lay groundwork for the characters and their abilities. I felt like I was lagging a step behind through most of the book because of it, not really able to connect to anything going on in it.

That wasn't the only problem, though. I thought the plot and characters lacked depth - especially Kit, who I never warmed up to. Some attempts were made to provide them added dimension, and Kit's debilitating degenerative disease and Wolfe's tragic childhood were good concepts, but neither plot point was really given much room to impact the story or the characters' development. There were also some stylistic issues with abrupt and awkward transitions that hurt the narrative. I loved the dogs, though. They were the best characters in the book. Unfortunately, that leads me to another problem.

There weren't many explanations offered or answers found in this book, so the entire reading experience felt a bit like a secret mission above my pay grade. What were the dogs capable of? Would what happened to Cruz happen to the rest of the group? If not, why? How, if Cruz has been in roughly the equivalent of solitary confinement in the bowels of a secret facility for the past two years and considered dead to his former teammates, did he find out about the dogs or make the contact with buyers? And how would he know to look for Wolfe's service record before he'd been assigned to guard Kit? Why was Izzy able to willfully defy the head of Foxfire without repercussion?

So many questions, so few answers, and not enough compelling me to continue the series to find out if they're ever answered.

The romance wasn't bad, though the pacing was a bit odd in places. I enjoyed parts of it very much. There was an abrupt jump to HEA at the end that seemed to come out of nowhere given the previous scene that had both Wolfe and Kit in it, but honestly, the romance and the dogs were the best parts of the book.

I still think that had I been around since the beginning of this series, I may have had a more favorable reaction to this book. The problem now is, I'm not sure there were enough good points in this book to motivate me finding out for sure.

Genre: Thriller/Suspense Romance
Series: The Men of T-FLAC - The Wrights, Book 2
Rating: 1 Star
Length: 320 Pages, 5458 Locations
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle


A kindergarten teacher and the glue that holds her family together, Delanie Eastman has hared off to the South American compound of the drug making, gun running, sadistic sociopath Montero after her baby sister went missing while in his company. Now she's neck deep in nasties and way out of her element, no clue how to even find her sister and naively...stupidly...sure she can handle the monster responsible for her disappearance.

T-FLAC agent Dr. Kyle Wright has been working undercover with Montero for four years, and just as he's ready to spring the trap and bring in the massive multinational task force that will finally end him, he arrives at his compound and practically trips over the one woman who, four years ago, picked him up in a bar in San Francisco and etched herself indelibly on his mind and heart...then left him after giving him her virginity.

As if four years of work that scarred his soul and sole responsibility for the operation that includes a world of different anti-terrorist groups isn't enough, now he's got the uncontrollable, intractable, and unbelievably stubborn Delanie to save, too. And she's just as determined to not be saved as he is to make sure she gets out alive.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Kiss and Tell, the first of the full length T-FLAC novels featuring the Wrights (my review here), I had an intensely difficult time getting through this one.

It's written with Cherry Adair's typical aplomb, three dimensional and layered, with a steady narrative full of pleasant description and dialogue that seems organic to the characters and has a natural conversational flow. The action scenes are taut, gripping, and very clearly defined, and the sex scenes between Kyle and Delanie were smokin' hot. The bad guys are definitely bad and their crimes atrocious, and the coldly clinical way they engage in those crimes is horrifying. I totally sympathized with Kyle and supported his actions to put an end to them.

And despite all of that, this book fell apart for me on two very basic points: the concept of the plot and the character of the female lead.

I was, in the end, incapable of garnering, let alone maintaining, a willing suspension of disbelief in a book that suggests it's conceivable that a character such as Delanie Eastman, kindergarten teacher and just this side of naive virgin, would think for even the briefest nanosecond that going up against a man such as Montero on her own, with no back up, with no one knowing where she is, in a colossally idiotic attempt to free a sister it is illogical to assume is even alive, was feasible. Let alone actually do it.

The entire premise for Delanie's presence at Montero's compound was ludicrous. And her actions while there, including her reactions to Kyle, were absurd and foolhardy beyond the extreme. Not to mention she was stubborn, stupid, and obscenely obtuse at every turn and with every layered plot thread. There was absolutely nothing to redeem her to me as a character.

I'll be the first one to admit, Adair writes the hell out of this book. Her skill as an author is impressive and I respect her work. But the concept for Hide and Seek was just too grievously flawed and one of the two main characters completely irredeemable. No amount of excellent authorial skill could have saved this one for me.

Genre: Thriller/Suspense Romance
Series: The Men of T-Flac - The Wrights, Book 1
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle


Jake Dolan was holed up in his mountain retreat for a reason. Someone had sold him out on his last mission, the terrorist he'd dedicated six years of his life to tracking and killing had slipped away from him yet again, and it looked like there was a mole in his agency...one who was setting Jake up to take the fall and threatening his sixteen years with the specialty covert operations unit. Life wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries for him, so when he looked at the monitors and saw a giant dog and a diminutive woman on his land...not thirty feet from the front door of his cabin above him, Jake was none too happy. And the woman was blond. Jake had very bad luck with blonds.

Marnie Wright had come to her grandmother's cabin in the mountains to make some life changing decisions. She had many fond memories of the place, having spent many a summer with her four brothers running like wild children all over the place. Now that her granny was dead and her brothers were rattling their sabers about tearing down the old place, she just wanted a chance to say good bye to some poignant memories and decide what her next course of action in life was going to be. She knew what she didn't want - to be a doormat...to be beholden...to be treated with kid gloves. Mostly she wanted to live a life she could be proud of.

She didn't expect the gruff demand of a surly stranger as she sat on a log sketching the cabin she'd come across while she was hiking with her Great Dane, Duchess. She didn't expect to find someone so utterly unapproachable to be so darned attractive, either, even while he was holding a shotgun and demanding she remove herself from his mountain - and if his attitude was any indication, the planet in general. But Marnie has four older and much bigger brothers she'd spent twenty-seven years dealing with, so surly didn't have any effect on her...much to Jake's bemused fury.

Events quickly conspire to trap Marnie and Jake together and the man can't get rid of her quick enough. One blond slitting his throat was enough, he surely wasn't going to let his guard down for another to do the same thing, and when a squad of men show up bearing weapons and combing the mountain for him just after the appearance of the potentially treacherous female, Jake's convinced he's been set up...again...to take the hardest fall of all.

I loved this book! Marnie was a delightful spitfire and Jake was a perfect blend of deliciously grim and adorably helpless against her. The plot was a bit of a stretch in places, but the action was top notch and the pace heart-pounding as Marnie and Jake try to stay alive without killing each other. There was just enough humor to make me chuckle out loud in several places and enough character development to really make me feel for both of them. I was delighted by a heroine who wasn't weak and didn't do stupid things and charmed by a hero utterly lacking in charm and so damn stubborn and convinced he's right...right up until he's not.

Everyone has preferences in their reading pleasures, and Adair definitely hit on just about every single one of mine in the romantic relationship in this one. It was just perfect for me. I favor spitfires and unbendable men - the unstoppable force and the immovable object to the extreme. Despite an initial volley by Marnie near the beginning that I thought was precipitous, I found the arc of their physical and emotional development to be paced well with the action and goings on around them. It never felt rushed or implausible given the nature of the characters, and that was a particularly pleasant surprise. And I loved - just loved - everything about Jake in the final chapter. He stole the show (details withheld to prevent spoilers).

I had a few issues with the plot, though. Beyond Duchess seeming a bit too much like Lassie on more than one occasion and the identity of the head baddie not being any sort of surprise, there were a few things that seemed a bit unlikely, if not downright contradictory (baddies with hands bound behind their backs cannot shoot someone in front of them). One scene in particular bothered me a lot - and I'm going to try to be as spoiler-free as possible, but it annoyed me so much that I have to say something - a bad guy has brought Marnie to the head baddie and head baddie specifically asks bad guy if she had weapons. Bad guy tells him she had a gun that she shot at him but he took it from her. Now...this is a team of highly motivated and highly trained terrorists...don't you think the bad guy would frisk her and find the other two weapons she had on her? The fact that he didn't snapped my willing suspension of disbelief to hell and back and jolted me right out of the story.

Despite all that, the romance and the action were strong enough to keep me utterly enthralled through to the end of this very satisfying book. The romantic story arc gets a resounding five stars from me, but the suspense parts were a bit weaker in spots and kept me from rating the book as a whole quite that high. Still, I very much enjoyed it and purchased the second in the series, Hide and Seek. I am a little confused, though, because according to the author's website, Kiss and Tell is the first book of The Wrights subset of The Men of T-FLAC series, but it's listed as the second book on Amazon, with Hide and Seek listed as the third. I'm not sure what's considered the first, even after my time on Adair's website, and I'd hate to miss a good story if it's out there. Any information to clarify would be appreciated.

The Men of T-FLAC: The Wrights Series:
   
                

Genre: Thriller/Suspense Romance
Series: Super Agent, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


As a free read on Kindle, you'd be hard pressed to beat Operation Sheba. The story is well told, the characters sympathetic and interesting, and the plot is full of intrigue, espionage, and thrills. The pacing and plot evolution were reasonably well done, and there were really only one or two parts that I thought would've been better served by a bit of editing, as I felt they were a little too descriptive or over written, but nothing to truly bog down the narrative or the let the tension in the plot fizzle.

I admit that this book is not in preferred genre of mine, and had it not been a free Kindle download, I wouldn't have read it, but I will say that it was well written and any fan of romantic spy thrillers would be very satisfied by it. If Misty Evans has any other books in different genres, I'd definitely be interested in checking them out, because I was pleased with her writing style and very much enjoyed the way she wrote the relationship between Julia and Con, and very impressed by the Machiavellian plotting and imagination that went into the development of the antagonist. And I really loved Smitty and Ace, though they were perhaps not as developed as they could've been.

I had one issue that I feel important enough to mention. There are a series of POV shifts at one particular part of the book when Jules and Con are in the safehouse and Michael is...lets say "otherwise occupied" to prevent spoilers. I wish the author had chosen to go another route on that, because I found it very distracting - unable to concentrate on the warm fuzzies (or the sizzle) of the Jules and Con moments out of concern for what was going on across town. And visa verse. Perhaps had it been written with less back-and-forth it would've been more effective for me. I'm not sure.

Considering the genre is not to my taste, though, I was pleasantly surprised and I was interested enough and impressed enough to finish it and like it. Hats off to Misty Evans for that.

Others in the series: