A seamless read and as close to a keeper as I’ve got with romantic suspense in the last few years.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Allegra Greenwood’s career as a top-notch defence lawyer is threatened when she receives an anonymous letter threatening to reveal naked photos taken of her while she was at uni. She enlists the help of ex-SAS Commander Luke Nielson to recover the photographs and, when the threats escalate, to protect her life.
Romantic suspense isn’t my favourite subgenre, but Lee Christine’s launch title for Escape Publishing hits all the right buttons. The weakest plot point for me—Allegra’s moment of indiscretion in her early 20s—turns out to be fairly plausible, and the suspense plot relies more on the anticipation that bad things are about to happen than actual graphic violence.
Luke is a lovely hero. He has alpha traits—physically demanding job, best in his field, somewhat aggressive when insisting that Allegra is in more danger than she thinks—but he also respects Allegra’s decisions and trusts her to see reason, rather than bulldozing her into submission. If anything, Luke has a bit of a martyr complex, but he never gets too irritating or boring.
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A tightly plotted and fast-paced book that’s difficult to put down—even if I knew it would not necessarily end very happily.
Nick Dunne comes home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find his wife gone. Amy appears to have been abducted in suspcious circumstances. The police immediately suspect him—did he or didn’t he?
Amy has left detailed diaries implying that she may have had a certain fear of her husband. Nick seems like a really nice guy—like he could never have done it despite the cracks in their marriage—but external evidence and his secrets—like why does he keep thinking, in great detail, about his wife being bashed on the head in the kitchen?—may prove this wrong. But what really happened?
This summary gives no justice to what this book turns into over the course of a riveting story. I really can’t say anything more without giving away spoilers. This is one cracker of a book that lives up to all its hype.
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New York to Dallas by J. D. Robb (In Death, Book 33)
The plot brings nothing new to crime fiction. Nevertheless, this is a reasonably good thriller that should allow In Death series fans to finally get some closure on Eve Dallas’s traumatic past.
I almost didn’t finish this book. In fact, it was almost DNF before it even really began. I’ve read the first few J. D. Robb novels, and I read Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series until the plot and characters went a bit WTF. So I’m not a stranger to crime fiction and the serial criminals that authors like to foist on readers.
But, for some reason, the beginning of New York to Dallas had my tummy churning. Serial child rapist Isaac McQueen was Eve Dallas’s first major arrest, and now he’s escaped prison. He’s determined to make Eve pay for putting him in prison and forces her to return to Dallas.
Readers of the series will know that Dallas is where, as a child, Eve finally escaped from her abusive father by stabbing him as he tried to rape her. Eve thinks she’s dealt with her past, but we—and husband Roarke—know this isn’t entirely true.
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Border Watch by Helene Young (formerly called Border Watch)
In which we discover that an Aussie book by a real Aussie does not include the words ‘fair dinkum’.
You can probably tell that I haven’t read many Aussie authored novels. Or, if I have, I didn’t really know they were. Or they weren’t set here (or in this era!). Most of my Australian based romances came in category form, where characters lived in the outback, were written by Americans, said ‘ass’ instead of ‘arse’ (Kat’s mega pet peeve) and said ‘fair dinkum’ a hell of a lot. Now, there’s nothing wrong with ‘fair dinkum,’ but honestly I think I have heard it fewer times than the number of years I have been in this country.
Wings of Fear was nothing like the stereotypical category romance I read growing up, proving that if you want to write about Australia, you really do need an Aussie to get it right.
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Border Watch by Helene Young (retitled as Wings of Fear)
Intelligently written and down to earth without being boring, this is a book to refresh your romantic palate without completely departing from the genre.
This review was previously posted on the Australian Romance Readers Association blog.
The first in a trilogy based on Australia’s aviation industry, Border Watch by Helene Young is the story of Captain Morgan Pentland, who has overcome a childhood of violence to become a border patrol pilot, and Commander Rafe Daniels, a former SAS officer who suspects Morgan of leaking information to terrorists.
Sparks flew between Morgan and Rafe from the moment they met and when Rafe joins Morgan’s team, they share a combative banter, unwilling to admit to their attraction. A terrorist attack brings them closer and they develop a mutual admiration and respect for the other’s strength, but remain unwilling to get involved.
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Salvation in Death by J. D. Robb (In Death, Book 27)
With 26 earlier books in J. D. Robb’s In Death series, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Salvation in Death and Robb delivered on all counts.
Eve Dallas is a homicide lieutenant in the New York Police and Security Department in 2060 and each book contains a case for her to solve, while juggling issues from her past and the roles as wife to multi-billionaire/owner of damn near everything under the sun/Irish sex god Roarke and friend that confuse her on a daily basis.
Father Miguel Flores was performing a funeral service when he dies in front of the grieving family from cyanide poisoning after drinking sacramental wine. Signs of a tattoo removal and plastic surgery as well as a silver medal inscribed with the name Lino suggest that the victim wasn’t really a priest. Eve has to find out who he really was and why he chose this particular parish to minister, in the hopes of finding clues to his murderer.
A televangelist who regularly hits the vodka and cheats on his wife takes a drink from a vodka-laced bottle of water onstage and collapses dead in full view of his audience.
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Red Dust by Fleur McDonald
BOOK GIVEAWAY: Read on for a chance to win a signed copy of Red Dust. The contest ends midnight on Wednesday, December 23 AEST.
Fleur McDonald’s debut novel evokes the rugged beauty of the Australian outback through the eyes of a strong protagonist, but this might not be enough for genre readers.
If there’s one type of contemporary romance I’d like to see more of, it’s the good old outback romance. I don’t mean generic romances set in the outback where the hero is a land baron with money to spare. I mean romances set in the harsh landscape of rural Australia, where people struggle against the vagaries of nature, and where I can feel the hot dust on my tongue as I read the story.
If there’s one thing Red Dust does well, it’s capturing the beauty and roughness of outback Australia.
When Gemma Sinclair’s husband dies in a plane crash, she takes on the task of managing Billbinya, their 100,000-hectare sheep station. Although she’s managing to stay afloat
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Dark Country by Bronwyn Parry
BOOK GIVEAWAY: Read on for a chance to win a free copy of Dark Country. The contest ends midnight on Friday, December 11 AEST.
Bronwyn Parry’s second novel is a much more intricate thriller that balances romance and suspense in a way that should appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Dark Country opens with Morgan ‘Gil’ Gillespie’s return to Dungirri, hinting at his troubled past and discomfort at returning to a place that holds nothing but bad memories. He’d been involved in a fatal car accident that landed him in prison, so he’s not expecting a warm welcome from the town. Along the way, he meets police sergeant Kris Matthews. Gil is wary of cops, but an incident sparked by old grievances puts him under Kris’s care for the next 24 hours.
The next day, a dead woman is found in the boot of Gil’s car, and as violence escalates, Gil realises he’s endangering the people he cares about and that it may be impossible to walk away from the town this time around.
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Cold Front by Ann Somerville (Pindone Files, Book 4)
Because who could resist that cover? Seriously.
When I was offered the chance to read an M/m romance by Australian author Ann Somerville, I scrolled through her website and the book with the shirtless man in tight black pants with his hands cuffed behind his back brought out my inner cover tart.
Then, when I read that it was along the lines of an M/m BDSM paranormal CSI, I was even more interested in the story because just one of those would have been enough to attract my attention. The book contains two prequel novellas, One Brief Encounter and A House is not a Home, followed by the novel Cold Front, which is the focus of this review.
One Brief Encounter
One Brief Encounter is told mostly from Dekan hon Cerimwe den Tsikeni’s point of view. Dek met Rensire hon Parmin den Vizinken in a bar while visiting Ren’s home region for police training and they had an immediate connection.
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Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum, Book 14)
In my library/computer room, I have a red box mounted on my wall. You know the type—fronted with glass bearing the words “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS” with the little hammer alongside. This box doesn’t contain the lever to my alarm system, or a fire extinguisher, or ten thousand dollars in unmarked, non-sequential bills and a passport under the name Jane Smith. No, it contains something much more vital than that. It contains two unread Stephanie Plum books, soon to be joined by the new release, Plum Spooky (after all, three Plums are better than two). Or it did until I broke the glass over the weekend.
These books are the reading equivalent of chocolate, with a lot of nuts thrown in.
The usual suspects
Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter with more luck than talent, who is occasionally partnered up with a black, plus-sized, trigger-happy ex-ho named Lula, who is the source of many hilarious moments throughout the series. She has an on-again off-again relationship with hot bad-boy-turned-cop Joe Morelli
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