I really like Roxanne St. Claire's writing but this book totally missed the mark for me.  Usually I like the whole reunited lovers and all the angst it brings.  Well I felt no angst nor did I feel the love. Beyond that, this book really pissed me off by both character's stupidity.

 

 

Let's start this from the beginning. This review will have LOTS of spoilers!

 

Max worked and was a friend of Cori's father.  They were both DEA agents.  Cori met Max when Cori's father was having a gambling night with his co-workers.  She joined in playing poker with them all.  Cori and Max dated for a year.  They planned to get married and tell Cori's dad about it.  Her dad is not so happy about this and they argue.  Both her dad and Max leave in anger.  The next day, Cori's dad was dead, killed in a drug bust.  Max say he was too slow in saving her father.  Cori thinks he was purposely too slow.  Tells the DEA this to purposely fuck over Max.  Max get demoted without the ability to rise in the ranks ever again.

 

Where is the trust even?  I'm not feeling it.  I'm not seeing it.  Cori seemed like a bitch to me because she obviously had no faith in the man she says she was deeply in love with.

 

The sad part is that Max actually lied...her father jumped in front of him and saved his life by losing his own.  

 

So instead of telling Cori how heroic her father was, he lies for no fucking reason.  NONE!

 

Let's move along.  In less than a year, Cori marries a man 35 years older than she is, whom is a billionaire.  Okaay....I'm not against dating older people but when they can be your father or hell, even your grandfather, that is getting a little creepy for me.  She gave up her dream of being a lawyer, to be with an old billionaire even though she doesn't care about money or publicity and shit like that. 

 

 

5 years later, her husband is dead.  There is some suspicion thrown around that she did it.  There was also an incident where someone tried to run her over.  Cori hires a bodyguard under the guise of keeping her stepson, a drug addict, away from her when actually she want to look into her husband's death.

 

Lucy give Max the job as a test and to see if Cori actually did it.

 

And so the story goes.  Cori gets attacked a few times.  Usually when Max isn't there.  She even has a TSTL moments when she decides to leave her bodyguard behind and sneaks out to talk to people even though someone has already tried to kill her a couple to times. Even Max wasn't immune to TSTL moments when he leaves Cori with someone he doesn't trust because she begs him to.

 

 

The little four letter word was brought up a lot but never shown.  There wasn't really that many flashbacks and none showed the couple falling in love.  And after believing that Max killed her father, she really did have that much of a problem of him being her bodyguard, or him sexing her up.  Actually they had sex before he even told her to truth of what really happened that night.  

 

This is what I'm truly pissed about.  There was nothing showing why this couple loved each other, they just were.  The never really even talk much about the past.  It's like we're suppose to believe they are in love because of the past but were never shown how they fell in love in the past nor in the future.  No drama about her accusing him of killing her father.  No blame placed on her for ruining his life at the time.  Nothing.  He sexes her up pretty quickly, like the next day.

 

 

I thought the plot was alright, another double whammy of having two villains.  One you knew from early on and got his POV and the other revealed at the end. It still wasn't enough to save this novel.

 

Oh well, on to the next novel with all hope it will be much better than this.

I've been making my way, in random order, it seems, through Roxanne St. Claire's backlist. Over the past week, I finished First You Run, and yesterday wrapped up Then You Hide. Two more novellas and I'll be done with her romantic suspense Bullet Catchers series. Le bittersweet sigh.

 

Then You Hide is book #5 of the series, which is also part of a three-book arc of a mystery surrounding a woman who was wrongly imprisoned for murder and is dying of cancer, and a cop's search for the baby daughter(s) she gave up. This book focuses on Vanessa, a workaholic hedge-fund manager and Wade, the former Marine sniper, who is sent to fetch her.

 

Tropical location, awesome contrast between Southern-boy hero and fast-moving New Yorker heroine, crackling sexual tension (and payoff!), suspenseful plot about finding a friend, and a lovely emotional subplot about belonging and being deserving of love. Fab.

 

Here's a lil excerpt:

 

She was plenty womanly, all right, but not feminine. He liked a sweet, tender peach, all squeezably soft and fresh. Vanessa Porter was no peach.

 

She was a tart.

 

Oh, Wade. I love it when they fall hard. Heh. Seriously, Wade was great. Read it for him. He doesn't grow very much in this book, which is why it was four and not five stars, but there were some nice subtle changes.

 

I also enjoyed how St. Claire keeps me guessing as to whodunit. I think I'm so smart and then nope. Twist, twist, twist. That's part of the fun.

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first in a trilogy of Bullet Catcher novels (and I'll say no more about that).

I found Fletch's Australian accent difficult to hear in my head because I'm English and so when he used words like "Mum" and "luv" I heard an English accent – my issue not the author's!

So Miranda has written a book about the Maya (Mayan is the language) which debunks the myth that the world will end on 31 December 2012. She is on a book tour to promote the book but is being harassed by a group who are convinced that she is wrong.

Fletch is helping his friend Jack look for the daughter of a woman, currently serving life in prison, Jack is convinced that the woman is innocent (I'm never sure how he reached that conclusion or even met the woman). The kicker is that the woman has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transfusion. Thirty years earlier (about eight months before the murder for which she is serving life imprisonment) she gave away her baby for adoption because she was an unmarried mother. Jack has enlisted Fletch to find the daughter based on a list of female children adopted in that year from the home. There may have been more to the story than that but it wasn't really important other than to explain why there weren't proper records of the adoption. Apparently the daughter was tattooed somewhere on her body by the nurse at the mother's request – this was often done so that the mother could identify her child later in life.

So, Fletch is going through a list of women, trying to get them naked to identify whether they have an identifying tattoo – he doesn't know what the tattoo looks like or where it is on the body!

Miranda is his next target – he goes along to one of her book reading/signing events only to save her when one of "the end of the world is nigh" starts a near riot. Fletch sweet talks Miranda in order to try to get her naked and persuades her to keep him around as protection – however, he soon finds out that she has no idea that she is adopted.

The trouble at the book signing is only the start of a series of events, including the bombing of a book store, which threaten her life. She and Fletch get closer but he is running out of time – does Miranda have the tattoo?

I won't spoil the story, which is suitably wacky and YET AGAIN involves two different villains and classic misdirection. Nevertheless, because of the overarching story arc which begins in this book I felt it had more substance than the previous books.

Sooo…

I quite liked Sage, she was tenacious and wouldn't let go of a story, Johnny was a bit dim – way too much "ask no questions" for my liking although his cookery skills won him awards.

The story, whilst being wildly different to the previous ones, still appeared to follow the same pattern of having two separate criminals which muddied the waters. AND, yet again, one of the criminals was a close acquaintance – I know I was yelling at my Kindle very early on – "don't trust him!".

The plot, Sage (who is Lucy's niece) is an investigative reporter. Her wealthy flatmate has allegedly committed suicide instead of going on an organised "abduction" offered by a thrill-seekers website. Sage refuses to believe that her flatmate committed suicide and tries to get Lucy's help. Lucy has investigated and is convinced that the website is legitimate and that Sage's flatmate never made it to the arranged abduction – apparently the drop-out rate is quite high! Knowing Sage won't let it drop, Lucy arranges for one of the bullet-catchers (Johnny) to be the knight in shining armour that rescues Sage, but she. Doesn't. Tell. Johnny. Why.

The plot kind of held together although there were way too many coincidences for my liking.

Amazon blurb: Max Roper never lets emotion get in the way of his job -- not since the tragic shooting that killed his fiancée's father. Now the former DEA agent is a Bullet Catcher, and he's managed to block out Cori's bitter goodbye -- and their sizzling passion. Those dangerous desires come back with a vengeance when Max is assigned to protect a recently widowed heiress: who turns out to be Cori. But Max must also discover his ex's dark secret...and they both know she can't hide anything from him.
Her luxury lifestyle suggests that Cori has gone from being a trophy wife to a merry widow, but nothing could be further from the truth. Suspicious of her billionaire husband's sudden death, she hires a bodyguard. But her protector is the one man who can melt her every defence -- the one man she blames for her deepest sorrow, the one man whose six-feet four-inches of solid muscle ignites reckless passion in her. And as they close in on a killer who hides in plain view, their high-stakes affair could cost her everything...including her life.

A solid 3 stars. I thought there were too many similarities to the first book villain-wise two villains with separate agendas and I thought there was little suspense about the identity of the villain.

The heroine was a little too cookie-cutter similar to so many other heroines in these books - doesn't listen to what her bodyguard tells her, tendency to blurt out secrets to everyone, goes off alone etc.

Will probably read all of them but a bit less enthusiastic than I was after the first book.