How does one go from a 4 to a 3? Two reasons.

 

one - the sequelitis was strong with this one. Seems like every time a character reappeared, we were reminded of their importance in this tale. I mean; I just read the first book. I didn't need reminding repeatedly how the captain and the other three near-invalids had been tortured, experimented on, and ultimately rescued. Yet the reminders were there, at least twice. The villain's purpose in life was told more than once as well.

 

two - for all that the h was smart, she was also a dingbat. I don't do dingbat. She did come to her senses after he had a come to jesus moment with her, but there's still that dingbatitis.

 

Ok, the story goes that at the tender age of 7(?), she found a boy in her back yard. Her father took the kid to the hospital, and later took him in. There's 6(?) years difference between them. About the time the boy turned 18, he noticed one day that she had boobs. Unfortunately, dad noticed that he noticed, and sent him away with a duffel bag full of clothes and $25 grand (I winced at that - a kid with that much cash on him? Ack!). He joined the army. In the meantime, dad began showing signs of altzheimers.

 

5 years later, he reads the father's obituary and goes back to pay his respects. By this time, he's a Ranger. Heroine has spent the past 5 years in limbo, playing nurse. The medical expenses have cleaned out the family coffers, the house is now mortgaged... He spends the night, and is woken early the next AM by a text that a mission is going down and he needs to be back at the base by midnight. He's not allowed to tell anyone other than a wife of this, but leaves the h a note saying he'll be back. He takes the time to order up a buttload of groceries, pays the funeral bill, and makes plans to transfer his savings, but he doesn't do this.

 

Heroine wakes up later, wanders around the house, and until the food is delivered, assumes he'll be back. At that point, she goes off to her room to mope, packs up everything, and vanishes.

 

10 years later... she's in trouble, mentally calls for help (more on that later), and after he rescues her, gives him shit for abandoning her.

 

Of course after she finally gets over herself, they go on a mission to see if they can rescue her friend.

 

In the meantime... the villain takes himself out by virtue of being too smart for his own good and injecting himself with a viral form of the performance enhancing serum he's been working on.

 

The issue with the h is that besides the obvious - if he's in the military, his ass belongs to Uncle Sam - she astral projects and has been spying on him for the 5 years after he "disappeared". She knows he's military and suspects special forces. She even asks him, which causes him a great deal of consternation. So his disappearing the next day... she could have figured out what happened by spying on him again. But no; she did the whole drama queen thing. Then, after he went into town, took out 4 men to rescue her, even though he's a wanted man and in hiding, she gives him shit. And after he tells her he went back, after he tells her about the mission, after he tells her he left a fricken illegal note, she doesn't want to deal with this right now. I wanted, at that moment, to reach through the pages and bitch slap her back into kindergarten. He'd been looking for her for 10 years. She'd changed her name. <mutter>

Dream of Danger

by Maggie Shayne
Book 1.5 of Brown and de Luca

This short novella was enjoyable, but felt kind of pointless and open-ended, like it would have been better off as a full-length novel with more material.  That being said, I DID still enjoy it if only because I'm kind of in love with Rachel's voice and narration, and I'm kind of in love with Myrtle, the adorable blind bulldog.  The mystery/suspense/thriller part was a little 'meh'.  And Mason really just did not even feel present.

There are hints that there might be more to Amy's kidnapping, which I suspect may be addressed in a later book.

I was hoping to like this book more than the first one, but instead I found that I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. It was just OK for me. The one thing that I did like about the book was that Nick and Elle's story isn't told through flashbacks. Instead, it starts 10 years in the past. We get to see how they met and how they ended up getting torn apart from each other. I liked the linear aspect of the story instead of getting their back story in pieces.

Nick and Elle were OK. I thought that they got together a little too quickly for me once Nick finds her again. Elle didn't have much will power. I'm not sure I bought Nick not being able to find her for the amount of time it took him to. With all of their technology, it should have been a piece of cake. I was also a bit disappointed that author set up the same "loss/resurrection" scenario with this couple in the end. She already did it with Mac and Catherine in the first one.

The story was a bit repetitive and went over the same material about Haven and its residents one too many times. It ended up making the book longer than it needed to be. I'm hoping that the author will tighten things up more in the next book and not go over the same ground again. The ending was a bit of a cliffhanger and I do look forward to Jon's story next in Breaking Danger, which comes out later this year.

Review will be posted on From the TBR Pile on June 20, 2014

3.5 stars

The story and characters were really good, but the reason I'm only rating it a 3.5 stars is because of the constant repetition. I found the author continued to 'remind' the me of past events which started to piss me off so I found myself skimming to get to the good parts.

I really liked Nick and Elle's characters, and I like where the author went with Dr. Lee's character.

I can't wait to read Jon's story!