Like the previous book in this series, this one has a paranormal aspect to it.  It’s played off as genetics, with the two women being created in a government lab, but it’s not quite believable.

Grace is even more powerful than her sister, Shea.  They can both heal, but Grace can completely heal someone - taking the wound or illness into herself (which can be fatal to her).  This makes more people interested in Grace than her sister, since Shea can only temporarily block pain and help the healing process along.

I still find this unbelievable, but I’ve just decided to go with it.  I’m really annoyed with the idea of them both having powers.  Aside from these two women this series is completely modern with nothing about magic or powers of any sort.  I’d actually be less annoyed if more people in the series (like Rachel or one of the Kelly brothers) had powers.  I get that Shea and Grace have these powers because of government interference, but it really annoys me!

Echoes at Dawn -- Maya Banks

Book 5 of KGI series

Adult, Romantic Suspense, Military, Paranormal, Erotica

Echoes at Dawn finishes out the short story arc pertaining to the Peterson sisters, their psychic abilities, and some Big Bad Conspiracies that involve nameless organizations chasing after them wanting to exploit said abilities. The story arc began in the previous book, Whispers in the Dark wherein the younger Peterson sister, Shea, somehow reached out to Nathan Kelly while he was in captivity somewhere in Afghanistan.

Saving Nathan's life in turn gave her hope at being saved herself as well as helping older Peterson sister, Grace.

Grace's story is somewhat less chaotic with fewer tangents. And while there were a lot of quibbles about this book that crossed my mind, in the end, I have to admit that I really enjoyed reading the book... if only because it possesses the same familiar feel-good formula for a Happily Ever After™.

I do appreciate that while it seemed that Grace started off in a broken, weakened, reliant, damsel-y state, her determination allows her to grow into a stronger person--probably the same strong woman she had been, running alone, before being tortured until she couldn't stand to live much longer.


The Story in Brief:
Grace Peterson had been captured and tortured because of her ability to heal others, even at the cost of her own welfare. During a random attack on her captors, she has managed to escape and has been on the run for some time. At the end of her limits, KGI team leader Rio and his men have finally caught up to her on their mission to bring her home safely to her sister.

But there is some other deeper conspiracy at work as well as another rogue black ops unit on their trail. Feeling a strangely immense protectiveness for Grace upon their meeting, Rio is wary and reluctant to further move Grace into danger until he understands the situation. So he and his men retreat to his hidden, private sanctuary so that they can regroup and figure out what's going on as the best course of action in keeping Grace safe and alive.


My Thoughts:
The story line of Echoes at Dawn is pretty straight forward once we find out who the Big Baddie is early on in the story. A rich and terrible man is about to lose his beloved daughter to a cancerous illness and is desperate to do anything to save his little girl's life, even at the cost of others. So he contracts the elite men of a black ops unit called Titan to help him find and bring Grace Peterson to him so she can help his daughter.

As part of the background to this story, Grace is also supposedly still being pursued by various secret government agencies who want to exploit her abilities, or put her in a lab to run experimentation. Either way, no matter where Grace goes, she won't be living a normal human life of freedom.

In the previous books, Rio comes along and automatically volunteers to help retrieve Grace... for reasons.

It is this, the romance of the book, that starts getting a little shifty. Because, to be totally honest, the main conflict is actually pretty exciting, even though there's very little story to tell. At this point in the series, I've realized that the KGI books have become somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine, because good storytelling and sensible narration it is not, but fun and emotional and feel-good and all sorts of lovelies it is.

As is par for a KGI installment, we've got readily likable characters, immense FEELS in the character interaction, and despite the romances being a little hard to accept, the rest of the storyline is exciting, enjoyable, and lots of fun. So I'm willing to overlook the repetitive monologue-ing, tacky dialogue, deliberate descriptions and actions that are enforced to emphasize specific character traits to the reader, as well as the "Fated to Be True Love Forever and Ever" love story.

I take issue with the romance only because I'd rather see two people grow to develop feelings for one another (even if the "getting to know you" phase is short) rather than just falling in love because the story dictates it to be so. While I believe that love at first sight is possible, it just isn't really realistic. And the fact that Rio and Grace just "know" that they were meant to be together due to some sort of strange psychic connection seemed a bit insta-love, even if it technically really isn't insta-love.

But whatevs, the book was exciting and I liked it all the same.  There were moments of drag and then there were moments of excitement and then there were just Moments... even in spite of the tacky dialogue.  The introduction of another black ops unit as well as the character of Hancock was a nice new twist and I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of him in future books.

The conclusion was rounded out pretty well and we get the standard Happily Ever After™ for all as we conclude the psychic Peterson sisters story arc. There were lots of feel good moments... and maybe that's all that matters to me, really.

I sure did miss seeing most of the Kelly family, that's for sure. And Rusty seems to have grown up overnight from a belligerent teenager into a young woman going off to college... How much time as passed since the previous book? I guess she did graduate from high school the last time we saw her.

July is going to be a good month.

Since I always manage to devour good Romantic Suspense within days, I expect that the next week or two of reading will be fabulous.  If only I had some days off from work to just read and do nothing else, that would be perfect!  So my marathon reading won't so much be a marathon, but since all of the books listed (aside from Magonia, which I will get to in a little bit) are from authors/series I've already been enjoying, that I am able to breeze through, I'm hopeful that I won't be having any draggy reading slumps.

The only obstacles are Real Life and Work.  And sometimes Family Functions as there is a wedding coming up...

Magonia is a young adult book I'm interested in to an extent.  Some conflicting community reviews give me pause, and it's not like I've been having the best of luck with 2015 books I've chosen to read so far this year (aside from Shadow Scale, that is).  But my library hold pinged and so here we are...

Crossing my fingers on that one, but at least I have a good feeling about my next two weeks of reading with Kay Hooper's Bishop/SCU books, and the next two Maya Banks KGI stories.

On top of that, I also plan on purchasing Kylie Brant's newest Mindhunters book, Secrets of the Dead and reading it as soon as I can get my hands on it (publication, June 30).

My only worry is not having enough time to read everything!  Those darn First World Bookish problems!

I will be reading the three Bishop/SCU - Blood trilogy books as part of my Reading Assignment Challenge.  I've been looking forward to diving into these books.  The fourth book I'm reading for July's Reading Assignment Challenge is Veronica Roth's Allegiant, which isn't listed above because I bought the book last year when it was published, but just never got around to it.  I'm only listing my library check outs because I'm excited about them.

Though I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not...

I stared reading this in July of 2012...and just finished it in April 2015...so giving this any higher than 2 stars seems ridiculous....not to mention unwarranted.

To be fair i think it was the para elements that did me in...Granted it has been a looong  ass time, so i can't be sure, but IIRC,  i was getting sick of PNR's  when i  initially put this down, so if it hadn't been for the h's abilities, I think I may have liked this more.

I can't really say anything else though, becasue  again, its been a loong time and   hundreds of books later, not much really stands out in my memory....and silly me didn't make any reading notes :( i suppose i could've gone back and skimmed, but meh...i didn't wanna.

However, now that I'm sloooowly getting back into PNR's I can honestly say the ending wasn't too bad :) So if you've liked Maya Banks books in the past (or at least her KGI titles) and you didn't over indulge in PNR books, chances are, you'll like this more than I did...at least enough to finish it in less than the 2+ years it took me!

I'm not sure why I didn't like this as much as Whispers in the Dark, but I was easily distracted and it took me forever to finish this one. This one had insta-love, virginity, and unprotected sex (all annoy me in contemporary romances). The action was good and I liked Grace and Rio.