Tina's Reading Books

As I was reading this book i was really, really enjoying it. I think I've on;y ever read one LMR book before and was nicely surprised by her style.

But after I finished and mulled it over for a bit, I realized that even though the read was crazy enjoyable there were some things about the book that keep it from being a 5 or even a four star for me.

Except for a few forays into the increasingly bat-shit crazy mind of the the guy who is out for Drake's blood, this story is told almost exclusively from Drake's POV. On one level that is really great because it is a rarity to get a book that is almost completely from the perspective of the hero. But otoh, it made for a very opaque heroine. Because we are in his thoughts constantly and know what he thinks/feels for her, she almost seems like a manifestation of his deepest fantasy. She is THE perfect woman for him as we are told in many different ways. But because she rarely had a voice, we just have to take it on faith that she really is all these things (and that his perception of her isn't just wishful thinking on his part).

It is also important to note that the hero is a truly bad guy. He isn't a Navy SEAL, he isn't an undercover cop or CIA agent. He is a Russian Gangster. An illegal arms dealer who sells all over the world to unstable countries etc. This particular thing doesn't bother me in a fictional sense. However, I had to groan when the heroine, clearly knowing that she wouldn't have been shot at and her friend murdered in front of her eyes, unless this guy was into something kinda bad. So what does she ask him? She wonders if he deals drugs. He says no...and that's it. I guess being a drug dealer is the only deal breaker with her. Couldn't she at least have asked if he trafficked in child pornography? Was wanted by the Secret Service for trying to assassinate the President? Ran a prostitution ring? She seemed remarkably uninterested in what he was.

And then there is the fact that Drake knew that someone in his organization betrayed him and he knew that the guy trying to kill him would just keep trying. So what does big, bad, super smart Drake do? He decides to spend the next 3 days fantasizing about boning Grace and then boning her at every possible moment. That's it.

I liked that he did (finally) get at the guy who was trying to kill him. But I was more disappointed in the fact that there was no attempt or effort to even find who in his organization betrayed him. That betrayal resulted in the murder of an innocent man (Grace's friend) and several members of his own security detail. But Drake has the fabulous Grace and that is all that matters to him.

So yeah, not a five star book. I still liked it in spite of those things, but it would have been a much stronger read in the end if the characters had a made a few different choices.