Women have long been on the battlefront and phycially defending themselves and others. 

Here are some wonderful Contemporary Romance Heroines who will hand you your ass with and without a smile.

My lists are never in any particular order. Enjoy! 

1. Harvard's Education by Suzanne Brockmann

It was an experiment . . . but no one could have predicted the results. For eight weeks FInCOM agent P.J. Richards is being given access to the absolutely-no-women-allowed world of the U.S. Navy SEALs, and she isn't about to let anyone tell her she can't hack it. P.J. can't afford to be distracted by anything . . . or anyone. And that includes Senior Chief "Harvard" Becker. Harvard believes that there is no room for women in a combat zone. It's too dangerous, too tough . . . and with P.J. involved, too distracting. He might respect her sharp intellect and her shooting abilities, but he still doesn't want the responsibility of making sure she stays alive. But P.J. isn't a woman who backs down easily, and to her mind, Harvard has a lot to learn. She just doesn't expect him to be so eager to instruct her on other subjects . . . like trust, desire and maybe even love.

2. High Risk by Vivian Arend

Rebecca James was once revered for her devil-may-care attitude and backcountry survival skills. But ever since she lost her partner in a fatal accident, patches of her memory have been missing. And until she can recall those final, tragic moments before the accident, she can’t move on. 

Since Marcus Landers was permanently injured during a mission, all his energies have been focused on his Lifeline team. When Becki—whom he had an intense affair with seven years ago—arrives in Banff, he’s inspired to reignite the spark they once had. Their mutual ardor slowly awakens Becki’s dormant, haunting memories. 

New truths surface until Becki must at last confront her greatest fear. Remembering the past might mean a future without the man she loves…

3. Ice Storm by Anne Stuart

he powerful head of the covert mercenary organization The Committee, Isobel Lambert is a sleek, sophisticated professional who comes into contact with some of the most dangerous people in the world. But beneath Isobel's cool exterior a ghost exists, haunting her with memories of another life…a life that ended long ago.

But Isobel's past and present are about to collide when Serafin, mercenary, assassin and the most dangerous man in the world, makes a deal with The Committee. Seventeen years ago Isobel shot him and left him for dead. Now it looks as if he's tracked her down for revenge. But Isobel knows all too well that looks can be deceiving…and that's what she's counting on to keep her cover in this international masquerade of murder.

4. Creed by Kristen Ashley

Way too young, eleven year old Tucker Creed and his six year old neighbor, Sylvie Bissenette, find they have something awful in common. Creed then decides he’s going to do everything in his limited power to shield his Sylvie from her ordeal. So he does and Creed and Sylvie form a bond that grows and blossoms with their ages. 

They plot to leave their lives behind, the town they live in that will hold them down and the histories they share that, unless they break free, will bury them. Sylvie goes to their special place, Creed never shows and she doesn’t see him again until it’s too late. 

With Creed gone, Sylvie is forced to endure a nightmare and do the unspeakable to end it. To deal, she develops a hard shell with sharp edges that very few can break through. So when Creed again finds his Sylvie, he discovers the girl he loved is locked away and he has to find his way back into her heart without getting shredded in the process. 

5. Shades of Gray by Maya Banks

he Kelly Group International (KGI): A super-elite, top secret, family-run business. Qualifications: High intelligence, rock-hard body, military background. Mission: Hostage/kidnap victim recovery. Intelligence gathering. Handling jobs the U.S. government can’t…P.J. and Cole were sharpshooting rivals on the same KGI team and enjoyed a spirited, uncomplicated camaraderie. Until the night they gave in to their desires and suddenly took their relationship one step further. In the aftermath of their one-night stand, they’re called out on a mission that goes terribly wrong, and P.J. walks away from KGI, resolved not to drag her teammates into the murky shadows she’s poised to delve into.Six months later, Cole hasn’t given up his search for P.J., and he’s determined to bring her back home where she belongs. Bent on vengeance, P.J. has plunged into a serpentine game of payback that will make her question everything she’s ever believed in. But Cole—and the rest of their team—refuse to let her go it alone. Even if it means sacrificing their loyalty to KGI, and their lives…

6, Bare It All by Lori Foster

As the person responsible for taking down a brutal human trafficker, Alice Appleton fears retaliation at every turn. No one knows about her past, which is exactly how she prefers it…until the sexy cop next door comes knocking.

Detective Reese Bareden thinks he knows what makes women tick, but his ever-elusive neighbor keeps him guessing like no other. Is his goal to unmask Alice's secrets? Or protect her from a dangerous new threat? One thing is certain: their chemistry is a time bomb waiting to explode. And with no one to trust but each other, Reese and Alice are soon drawn into a deadly maze of corruption, intrigue and desire—and into the line of fire….

7. Naked Edge by Pamela Clare

Someone wants the Native Americans off their sacred land. And when Navajo journalist Katherine James and park ranger Gabriel Rossiter team up to investigate why, their passion for the truth-and each other-makes them targets for those desperate enough to kill

8. Ultimate Weapon by Shannon McKenna

Covert operations are what Val Janos is all about. The man is mysterious and sinister, and lethally hot. Only Tamara can understand the strange intensity that drives him to win at all costs--and only she can match it.

Val has one weak spot: Imre, the frail old man who befriended him when he was a scared, hungry kid abandoned on the streets of Budapest. But Daddy Novak knows about Imre, and Imre's head is on the block if Val doesn't deliver Tam up to Novak's tender mercies.  .  .

A white-hot passion explodes when Tam and Val get too close. They both have too much to be afraid of, too much to hide. And now, for the first time, too much to lose. 

9.  Midnight Rescue by Elle Kennedy

Abby Sinclair had a desperate childhood until she was rescued and adopted by a retired army ranger who molded her into a master of self-defense. Now, she's a cunning and fearless assassin thrust into assignment after dangerous assignment, using everything she has-nerve, resilience, strength, sex-to come out on top. Her only rule: trust no one. 
Abby's latest assignment is in Columbia: go undercover and snuff out a dangerous arms dealer active in the underground sex trade. But when Abby purposely blows her cover in a last-ditch attempt to free the helpless victims, deadly mercenary Kane Woodland is recruited as back-up. His mission: get Abby out of that hell hole. 

The last thing Kane expects is to feel a primal attraction for Abby. But when she convinces him to join her on her perilous mission, their newfound passion could put the lives of their whole team at risk.

10. Long, Lean and Lethal by Lorie O'Clare

Detective Rain Huxtable works alone, and she likes it that way. But when a fourth spouse turns up dead in Lincoln, Nebraska, Rain's superiors call in help from the FBI. They've either got a serial killer or a hired murderer on their hands, and their solution is to team Rain up with Special Agent Noah Kayne—and send them undercover as a married couple. 

Noah is infuriating…and infuriatingly attractive. Rain wants no part of this charade, but with four people dead under suspiciously similar circumstances in a matter of months, she has no choice but to play the part of a doting wife and investigate a close-knit group of suburban couples. It's hard enough to keep up a professional facade when the heat between her and Noah burns so dangerously. But it may be even more dangerous for Rain to let her guard down once she realizes that the couples involved are playing a very sordid—and deadly—game …

 Did I miss you favorite? Let me know! Vote on my Goodreads list:  Deadly Women of Contemporary Romance 

Behind Closed Doors -- Shannon McKenna

Book 1 of McClouds and Friends series

The extra half a star I'm giving it has to do with two things:
1) It had a strong start with an intriguing premise in the beginning.
2) The ending was decent and the characters managed to make me stop being angry for the last few moments.

Of course, that stuff was too little too late. Because everything else in between either pissed me off or didn’t make enough sense for me to bother paying attention to it. Because this is also the second time ever that I’ve skimmed and skipped ahead past a lot of scenes and chapters that may or may not have been important. My only goal was to get to the end of the book.

I don’t like doing that, because I don’t want to miss any chance that something good will come about… but I CAN get bored and I WILL stop paying attention to what I’m reading sometimes when I book starts to drift downhill. And skipping ahead is something I really, really DO NOT like doing if I can help it.

Why I put myself through that when I could have just stopped reading is a mystery to me.

Where do I even begin?

As I already said: the story had a good, intriguing premise. Even the writing was smooth and good. But the characters managed to frustrate me to no end. And then I'm not even sure that there was much of a story to go on either. Also, the romance and the psychobabble and individual monologues between our main characters took up a lot of unnecessary space.

The book got frustrating really fast.

I just couldn't get past how angry I'd become at both Raine Cameron (aka Katya Lazar) and Seth Mackey. On a subconscious level, maybe the two of them deserve each other, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about how the romance played out and the types of characters they were presented as.

Raine has absolutely no sense of self-respect as a woman. This may sound like an extreme declaration, but she spends the entire book practically letting everyone walk all over her. She gets treated like some sort of product and reacts like a doormat despite the many, many, many, many references in monologue and others’ dialogue about how she’s changed, and she’s strong, and she can stand up to people, and she won’t stand there and let people push her around.

There were probably two moments in the entire book where she DOES exhibit a backbone and one of them was at the very end of the book when all the conflict is over and done with. But I say that Raine has no sense of self-respect as a woman, not because she’s a doormat, because men can be doormats too, but because of the way she allows Seth to treat her like a sex object to be owned rather than a human being.

Because Seth is a pushy, manipulative asshole; and he's abusive. And then he hides behind his “I’m socially dysfunctional” excuses. Aside from that, he’s got no other personality.

Which brings me to the romance which was just as dysfunctional as Seth’s behavior. Is Raine so deprived of love and romance in her life that she would readily let a neanderthal like Seth Mackey treat her like his personal plaything with no dignity? How do you even fall in love with a man who has no consideration for what you think or what you say?

Then again, Raine isn’t exactly a non-crazy entity in this relationship either--as many others have pointed out, she flashes hot and cold in this romance and it gets really confusing trying to figure her out.

Meanwhile, I’m seething about the development about the romance because it’s not a romance, it’s just a dysfunctional relationship where a man forces himself on a woman and the woman can’t figure out whether or not she wanted him to do it in the first place. Still, I’ve come to the conclusion that Seth is an abusive asshole.

Because when a woman says "Stop it!" and tries to wriggle free after a man practically drags her onto the floor with him in a surprise attack, and the jackass STILL continues to attempt to have sex with her, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that he's forcing her... And THAT is NOT okay.

Why did Raine have to feel bad about slapping Seth in the face when he wouldn’t stop trying to rip her clothes off after she tells him to stop? Why did she have to feel bad for being upset with him when she walks into her own home to find him sitting there after he had broken into said home? Why does she not run fast and far away from him when he continues to sit there, acting like he owns her and her ever action? Why does she still come running back to him even after he forces himself on her in the backseat of his car, then unceremoniously kicks her out of said car, all but commanding her to go home and wait for him to come to her later?

Of course, since Seth "knows" that Raine "wants" to be forced and "wants" to be pushed, then that makes everything okay, right? Because Seth Mackey isn't just a security specialist and a walking thug of an asshole, he's also psychic (sarcasm intended).

And you know, since he's being completely and utterly honest with her about how he has no social skills and doesn't know how NOT to push, then it just makes every fine and dandy.

But no. It is NOT okay. Not even one little bit.

If Seth Mackey weren't supposedly a good-looking, mysteriously attractive sex god, would Raine have allowed him to get away with his behavior? This is just another case of a romance novel glorifying the justification of a broody alpha male's inappropriate behavior by slapping on a caveat that it's okay because he's good-looking and sexy and "has his reasons for acting the way he does”--which usually equate to Daddy Issues™, a traumatic childhood, or just an inadequate ability to act like a human being masked as a simple “Just not socially good with life and people in general so I do what I want and fuck everyone else!”

Again, if this man weren't good-looking and sexy, would people be drawing the same opinions? That it’s okay for a man like this to act like a jackass and exhibit less than socially acceptable behavior--nay, dangerous behavior--just because he happens to have reasons?

You can have an alpha male be broody with problems without him being an utter asshole. An alpha male does not have to be the pushy arrogant type who only knows how to man-handle a woman he's attracted to. In fact, being a good man who respects his women's wishes doesn't make him any less of an alpha; any less of a man. It bothers me that some people think that an alpha male has to simply be a controlling, looming presence who gets what he wants whenever he wants, even at the expense of the woman who doesn't want it.

Anyway... I may or may not read more books in this series since I've noted other reviewers mentioning certain McCloud brothers being better and others of the McClouds & Friends books being far better than this one. So obviously I chose the wrong one to start with (damn me and my penchant for reading everything in order). Seth did get better as the book progressed and Raine did grow somewhat of a backbone by the end of the book.

Then again, this book's got tons of glowing five-star reviews... so maybe the content and the triggers in this book just sit less (much less) well with me than it does with everyone else?

Ugh. Two bitter, angry people that are lashing out at each other for no reason. Fuck this.

I liked the blurb for the next book in this series (Fatal Strike, #10), but reviews made it clear that I really needed to read One Wrong Move first. Unfortunately, that's probably true. I might try this one again later, but both lead characters are kinda dickheads for the first 8 chapters and I'm not feeling that right now.