I just didn’t feel invested in the relationship. It seemed to me the purpose of the sex was more to mess with the drug-lord bf rather than his desire for her. I don’t know what it was about Drea that attracted Simon in the first place.
Two points- one: I consider the author the master (mistress?) of sexual tension, and felt she sacrificed that. Then there’s the opening sex scene very early in the book. I’m aware some people thought the same about her previous book, Up Close and Dangerous, which I haven’t read. As if it weren’t enough, we get Simon (the assassin) chiming in on what he thought Drea would do every step of the way. We are being told in excruciating detail about how Drea is plotting her escape, planning to steal the money and to move such huge sums around, then more excruciating details of actually doing the same.
I almost gave up on reading this because there was so much telling and less showing for about the first two-thirds of the book. This book can be purchased in hard cover from Amazon or Powells. One other comment I’d like to make is that the official blurb of this book is a bit misleading because it suggests that Drea teams up with the FBI but that doesn’t really play a big part in the book at all (and I thought that the FBI scenes didn’t add much to the story). It would have been nice to have had greater insight into his motivations and what brought him to Drea, particularly since what is considered to be a hallmark of a Linda Howard novel are her great male characterizations. I think that was an intentional exclusion but it is worth noting that the hero is fairly occluded and mysterious throughout the whole story. One commenter noted the other day that the book included very little about the hero. The paranormal aspect allowed Drea to make the change into doing something worthwhile with her life but it seemed like the easy way out. I thought it was kind of shortcut in bringing about the emotional change that created such a line of demarcation in both Drea and the assassin’s lives. This is one of the better Howard books I’ve read in a long time and I appreciate the dark characters, but the thing that really held me back from loving this book was the paranormal aspect. She used her person ruthlessly to get what she wanted out of life but Drea was likeable despite, or maybe even because of, her lifestyle decisions. She wasn’t with Salinas because of some coercion. As a reader I cheered for her to survive, to win another chance at the game. It’s a game she’s destined to lose and she believes it which ultimately leads to her demise but she is given a second chance at life.ĭrea is a great character and her sense of desperation, her utter loss of self, is really heartwrenching. When Salinas first discovers her gone, he thinks she has been kidnapped but then uncovers the truth and hires the self same assassin to find her and kill her.ĭrea and the assassin play a short cat and mouse game in which Drea is at a great disadvantage despite her intelligence. She gathers up her possessions, robs Salinas blind and disappears. And walks out.Īfter spending herself in a river of tears, Drea decides that she’s had enough. She begs him to take her with him when he leaves and he responds with ‘Why. It’s that in the four hours in which the assassin beds her, she feels more and wants more than she has ever in her whole life. It’s not that she loved Salinas nor that she thought of herself so highly. She’s used her body as currency most of her life and when her boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, hands her over as payment to an hired assassin, she’s broken. Not bad different, just different.ĭrea Rousseau is smart woman who made some poor decisions and ended up being the girlfriend of a drug lord. I can’t pinpoint it, but this read like a different Linda Howard. But you’ve had darker books before (Cry No More) and you’ve featured different types of heroines (Duncan’s Bride) so it’s not really those attributes that set this book apart from the others in the Linda Howard library. At first I thought, this is a departure for you because it is such a dark book, featuring a very different type of heroine. I was ruminating about this book as I polished up the review. Jane B Reviews Category / B- Reviews / Book Reviews Assassin / Bantam Dell Ballantine / Contemporary / Linda-Howard / romantic-suspense 39 Comments
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