So ok, the h would make a v. good con artist. Granted, she's got a stalker so it's kinda necessary but the extremes she goes to is disconcerting. And pointless since she's tied to her grandmother so the stalker can always find her. And of course, the stalker is someone close to both her and her grandma.

I thought the H got over all her deceptions way too quickly.

The biggest issue for me with this though was the details. We're to believe that a successful business man (or heck, even an unsuccessful business man) has no security system anywhere in his house. How do we know this? Oh, the stalker waltzed in, watched the h shower, shredded her underwear, and left a note. No mention of alarms, no broken glass, the door just...open (no mention of damaged locks either). Come to think of it, the lawyer she worked for had a break-in at his office and no security system went haywire.

And well, not really understanding WHY the stalker had a "thing" for her. It wasn't like he was a neighborhood creep or anything - everyone liked him, he was good looking, etc. So why was he after her? Couldn't have been that he was hard up for a date.

I'm not sure how this one ended up in my pile. I must not have read the synopsis too closely. Basically, it's a romantic suspense of sorts where the bad guy has some sort of psychic powers over women with regards to sex. There's a point (where I put it down and just can't make myself finish) where he put the whammy on a couple of models (he's a modeling agent) and every female in his condo is affected...as is the h watching on a spy cam.

I assume the H took care of that for her.

Too skeevy for my tastes, particularly near the end (I tend to skip around a bit) where he cornered the h and she was stripping in spite of not actually wanting to even be in the room with him.

You know, I mostly liked this one, but a H who is as concerned with getting in the h's pants as he is with keeping her alive...yeah. It does not help that she'd, in telling him her life story, basically clued him in that she wasn't looking for a fling, and his history with relationships indicated he wasn't much better than her adoptive father.

Really dude, she told you no for a reason. Her mom divorced her dad after entirely too many holidays alone, and your wife divorced you for similar reasons - as you told her.

Of course, he finally succeeds, figures out afterward that he's in over his head as far as this relationship goes, and panics. In his mental freakout (and possibly, arrogance), he was careless and she was shot.

I kept hearing Jack Ryan's voice though - "I'm just an analyst!" The H was a code breaker; not a field agent.

My onliest gripe with the h was that she didn't hold out, and tell him why. I almost prefer the romantic suspenses where sex never happens. Seems to me that too many authors have the H thinking with the wrong head too much to be v. effective at his job.

Words fail me. I keep slipping into rant mode, but I'll try.

My sheer annoyance is based on the last chapter or two when the H, pissy because the h *who has known him about 72 hours* still doesn't trust him fully.

Bless his heart.

Dick.

I mean; her introduction to him was the blockage at her back door when she was trying to escape the bad guy who'd burst into her front door. He then tracks her down where she's hidden in a dumpster and threatens to help her shower, continues coming on so strong I felt she needed creep repellant - at least until he figured out that angle wasn't working.

She slept with him 36 hours later because - romance novel and why the hell not when you're being chased by rogue agents who have the ability to track you via satellite even as you hide in a high hide.

And then after he does his whole "I can't live with a woman who doesn't trust me" bit - yes, he said that, she does a whole hour or so of soul searching and decides she has to get over the last overly smarmy creep she was involved with or she'd never have a future with this one. And she tells him she trusts him at the end rather than you know, pointing out that she hardly knows him, they haven't even gone out on a date, and he reminds her a lot of her last boyfriend.

Another long separation, this one a friends to enemies to lovers. Only, the h didn't get the enemies memo.

Our H/h became friends when kids/teens/something. H read a lot more into it than h, or rather, H's intensity scared h into friendzoning him. He wasn't quite bright enough to pick up the signal though until she presented him with the news she was going to UCLA to further her education. Then he decided to get pissy about it, although not to her face.

She evidently did attempt contact when in college early on, but he never got back with her, so she gave up. She's a lawyer now, just as she'd told him many times while he was mentally planning out his family with her. I'd also add that her late mother had given up education for family, and it bothered her dad more than a little that she never got to go back and finish her degree, so he'd encouraged the h more than a little to get an education first. We're not told if the h ever said anything about that to the H but if they were fairly close friends and he knew of her intentions to get an education (even if he did ignore them), it stands to reason she did at some point.

Of course, something about his past is what brings them together, which is when she discovers she's his enemy now. Her dad has died, and she found a box of stuff pertaining to the H's past and his missing sisters. She took it to him, and he blew up in her face.

The bad news was, the reason he was never able to find his sisters was because his parents were CIA and were killed by a mole. And now she is on their radar. He arrives to apologize for his boorish behavior just in time to save her life.

Of course he blows hot and cold on her. He does it one too many times and she starts giving him the cold shoulder. Eventually after one too many brushes with death it occurs to genius that protecting his poor little feelings does little good if he or she gets their ass shot off, so he caves.

Lowlights - the h's constant mental dialog was downright irritating. The voices in my head is a figure of speech. Reading a h arguing with herself is something that should be left to comedy.