A delicious new heart-pounding romantic adventure from USA Today bestseller Amanda Bouchet!

Captain Tess Bailey and her crew of Robin Hood-like thieves are desperate and on the run. Pursued by a vicious military general who wants them dead or alive, Tess has to decide if she can trust Shade Ganavan, a tall, dark and arrogant stranger with ambiguous motivations.

Shade Ganavan had oodles of arrogance, oodles of charm, and oodles of something that made me want to kick him in the nuts.

What Tess and Shade don’t know about each other might get them killed…unless they can set aside their differences and learn to trust each other—while ignoring their off-the-charts chemistry.

*I received a free copy from the publisher via Netgalley and chose to leave a voluntary review. Thank you!*

 1 ½ ★----  DNFed at 47%

When I saw this and got approved for it on Netgalley I was super excited. Even when I started reading, it really started out good……….

But sadly after about 12% in, it went downhill, and when I say downhill I mean a steeeeeppppp hill.  Pretty much when she meets the main love interest, it goes downhill. Tess just becomes sooo dumb and oh so weak in the knees and pretty much just lusts after him all this time. 

You would think all that is bad enough but that is not all, the story is completely taken over by the romance….. Shane our main guy seems more douche than alpha hero and sometimes felt forced to be macho funny. The same for Tess.. She also felt forced at times and there is  not much to her, very blah and two dimensional and flat. The only thing I enjoyed about her was her friendship with her crew.

A lot of the story felt like a filler, and most of it didn’t even make sense really, people disappear and reappear for no reason, other parts of the story are thrown in and make no sense whatsoever.

And yes I only read 47% of the book and then cheated and read the last few chapters, well everything I thought I figured out at 20 some percent was right, it was very predictable and again some things didn’t even make sense. Not because I didn’t read it all, no but because it didn’t fit into the main story arc.

Another thing for me personally was, the switching of POV. I love multiple povs in a book, what I don’t love is when they alternate between first and third person. Either it should be all in first person or all in third person, but that is just my personal preference.

Overall, I really wanted to like this book, I really did but I just couldn’t there are just way too many things that annoyed me that I couldn’t even really finish the book.

I hope that other people enjoy it more and can overlook some of the things.

I rate it 1 ½ ★

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This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I must say that I ended up enjoying this book quite a bit. It did take me a while to really get into the story but once I did I had a lot of fun with it. I was really eager to read this book since I really liked her books from the Kingmaker Chronicles trilogy. This is the first book in a brand new series that blends science fiction with romance and I think it worked really well.

Tess Bailey and her crew start out this story in a bit of trouble. They have a stolen lab attached to their ship and are about to be caught. They take a chance on a risky maneuver to escape and then need to put the pieces back together. Their ship needs a lot of work and they are wanted by the authorities. Tess runs into Shade who happens to have the skills to put her ship back together. 

I did like the characters in this story quite a bit. Tess was a bit of a mystery especially as the story started but I liked her more an more as we learned more about her past. She considers her crew to be her best friends but she has kept her past hidden from even them. Tess was smart, loyal, and kind, but unsure when it came to Shade. Shade has been through some things and has made some big mistakes. I must say that I liked him right away. He seemed incredibly confident and observant. He does have a pretty big conflict of interest to contend with and I did enjoy getting the chance to peer into his head as he tried to figure out what he wanted to do. 

I really did like Shade and Tess together even though it seemed to take a long time for things to start happening. I thought that they had great chemistry and their personalities seemed to mesh very nicely together. I really enjoyed the fact that they had some rather heartwarming scenes, some steamy scenes, some were filled with humor, and some with action. No matter what kind of scene they were in, it seemed that their characters just made it better because they were working together. I also really liked seeing the relationships that Tess had with her crew, who were really more like her family than anything. 

I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys romance blended with some lighter science fiction. I think that this book is a solid first entry in what I expect will be an exciting series. I cannot wait to read more from Amanda Bouchet!

I received a digital review copy of this book from Sourcebooks Casablanca via Edelweiss. 

Initial Thoughts
This is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for me so I am rounding up for now. It took me a bit to really get into the story but I thought that the second half of the book was pretty strong. I liked Tess, her crew, and Shade even if I didn't fully connect with any of them. I was surprised that Shade didn't even make an appearance until around the 20% mark. There was plenty of action especially as the book progressed. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen in the next installment in this series.

This book went from really interesting to craptastic after 15%- now for a review

Nope, this is going to be a DNF for me I'm way to annoyed at this book to keep reading it.
Review to come

Scrambled, abrupt plot drops, character black holes, unbelievable characters. (possible spoilers) -This started out really good. I loved the action, the mystery man, the ship the mystery. At about 15% everything went wonky. The books is filled with cliches and I saw the big moments coming from the very beginning, no surprises These people are running for their lives, they are escaped prisoners with bounty's on their heads they can not trust anyone. Too bad the story didn't stick with that little detail. Then the "big guy" (yes that was his title) who was introduced and seeming to have a major part just vanished from the story. Okay, I was thinking he'll be right back with some trick to get them going on to the next level right ? No, it's didn't happen till the end, (the end !) when he just popped up again out of the mist and was accepted back into the fold. The MC the most wanted of them all, is so wishy washy, she trusts no person, then blabs her whole story to a complete stranger she just met, and wants to do business with. Then she takes a shower in this strangers house ! What ? Okay she's dirty, water is tight on the ship, something mentioned so many times, but really? You are in so much danger, wanted, hunted and you take a shower in a strangers house ?  Wait there is more. She steals a dangerous super solider vaccine, and finds out it's made from her blood. So because she's a super special girl she can drain herself almost dry to make a fix it for some sick kids. The story goes from this super solder vaccine to sick kids with whiplash speed. The vaccine that can cause war/death/destruction suddenly becomes almost forgotten in the story, it's all about saving these orphans, yeh orphans. I could go on but I think you get my feeling on this one. What happened ? I had this author on my top 20 list, this doesn't read like her work at all. Her last 2 books declined in quality this one dumped. I'm done and will not invest in her writing anymore.