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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The plot is just complex enough to keep you guessing, and the characters reveal just enough to make the story interesting. The romance still requires suspension of belief, but I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
When Australian author Shannon Curtis Twitter crowd-sourced the plot for her free Christmas short story, we came up with some fairly over-the-top scenarios. Many of them were tongue-in-cheek, but Curtis rose to the challenge and not only included many of our suggestions but most importantly, she included a vomit scene.
Seriously, she is awesome.
Nick Marshall is SAS on medical leave after injuring his arm in Afghanistan. As his brother’s best man, he’s on an errand to pick up the wedding rings when ‘five Santas, with white beards and wigs, streamed into the [jewellery] store, brandishing guns’. Holly Maxwell is the lead negotiator when the call comes through that there’s a hostage situation.
But there’s something strange about the case. The negotiations aren’t following the normal pattern. It’s up to Nick and Holly to free the hostages and figure out what the Santas are really after.
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Helene Young’s third novel and her best so far. If you like Nora Roberts’s contemporary romantic suspense novels, imagine them with an Australian setting and you’d probably get something close to this book.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
I’ve had the privilege of following Australian outback romantic suspense author Helene Young’s career from her first novel, and it’s been very interesting to witness her evolution as a writer. Young’s books straddle various lucrative but quite specific niches—crime and mystery, romance and rural lit. In Burning Lies, her first novel released with Penguin, Young seems to have found a comfortable balance between these genres.
Kaitlyn Scott lost her husband and her father in a suspicious fire; five years later, she’s even more determined to know the truth behind their deaths. Ryan O’Donnell is working undercover to expose a serial arsonist in the Atherton Tablelands, and the case leads him directly into Kaitlyn’s path.
Young sets up the suspense pretty well, but the culprit was disappointingly obvious—Young needs to resist the temptation to spell it all out for reader too soon. To Young’s credit, however, the story doesn’t cease to be a page turner. Kailtyn and Ryan’s personal struggles are just as compelling as the external plot.
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Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts
A satisfying romantic suspense with a capable heroine. The romance lacks intensity, but a decent mystery plot keeps the pages turning.
The thing about Nora Roberts is that I almost always enjoy her books—just never enough to want to buy her next one and let’s not even contemplate her backlist. Chasing Fire is no exception.
Rowan Tripp is an experienced firefighter with the US equivalent of the rural fire service, but it’s a little different this time. She lost a jump partner in a freak accident the previous season, and it seems someone has put the blame squarely at her feet.
There are a pool potential suspects, even though Rowan isn’t comfortable thinking that any of them could be capable of sabotage and murder. Aside from staff at the base station, there’s her fellow fire fighters, who rely on each other’s trust for survival. There’s also the newest batch of smoke-jumping recruits—firefighters who get flown into a middle of a bush fire.
One of these recruits is Gull Curry—perhaps one of the least romantic names I’ve seen in the genre—who is immediately attracted to Tripp’s ‘package’ and ‘attitude’. Curry’s a nice guy…and remains so throughout the entire book. The romance develops gradually, but it’s not quite central to the story. It’s nice to have, but not essential.
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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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Viper's Kiss by Shannon Curtis
A fun romp, but lacks the depth I want in a romance and the plausibility I want in suspense.
I’ll be honest. This book is a bit all over the place. The title smacks of the paranormal—snake shifters, anyone?—but the story is romantic suspense and ‘Viper’ is the codename for a notorious spy.
The cover is beefy, but the more sympathetic character is librarian heroine Maggie Kincaid, who is mistaken for Viper and is trying to avoid arrest, capture and/or torture, depending on who’s doing the chasing.
Luke Fletcher is a private security operative—ex-Special Forces, of course—hired to track down Viper and the top-secret technology she’s stolen from a research facility.
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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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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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