The Particulars: Romantic suspense, Penguin Random House Loveswept, 2016, first book in Tough Love trilogy, digital only
Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I'm not sure I'd classify Dimon as an autobuy (she is an autobuy under her Darby Kane moniker) but I do tend to pick up most of her books. The details are extremely hazy now what with 2016 being 10 years ago (yes, I woke up this morning and chose violence) - but I think this might have been her first foray into writing an m/m romance, a romantic suspense at that. I was intrigued - but still left this languishing in my digital TBR for 10 years because I am not well.
The Review: I made up my mind long ago that I was going to read something LGBTQ+ for this month's Pride theme and while I try to focus on my print TBR for this challenge, my choices are simply more diverse with options on my Kindle. I went diving in and unearthed this first book in an m/m romantic suspense trilogy that Dimon published with Loveswept 10 years ago. Y'all my TBR is a sickness, truly. However I am happy to report that even though I've done zero eyeball reading since mid-May, I read this story cover to cover in a couple hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It's not perfect, but y'all it's a win.
Fisher Braun is a CIA operative whose silent alarm at his secret townhouse has just gone off. When he gets there he finds the place ransacked and his BFF and partner, Nathan March, already on the scene. Who is not on the scene? Fisher's live-in boyfriend, Zachary Allen - the live-in boyfriend nobody knows about (heck his team in the CIA didn't even know about the second house....). Fisher is in the closet with his coworkers, although turns out it's not much of a secret. Anyway, it becomes apparent rather quickly that Zach has been taken and once Nathan stops busting his balls, he agrees to an impromptu rescue mission.
One small fly in the ointment, Zach isn't who Fisher thinks he is - it's revealed he's in bed with a super secret criminal organization that specializes in kidnapping for hire. This group takes a job, scoops up the victim (dead or alive - depending on the clients' wishes) and gets paid. Someone has hired this group to nab Fisher and Zach was ordered to "get close" to him. Fisher, needless to say, is pretty pissed off about this turn of events, but he's positively incandescent when Zach tries to sell him on the truth - which is that he's actually undercover CIA working to infiltrate this group and went rogue by getting close to Fisher in order to protect him. None of this is spoiler territory by the way, the whole thing is out in the open by the third chapter.
Anyway, bang-bang fists of fury and they escape - but Fisher and Nathan do not believe Zach, whose cover is now officially blown. It's not until they make their way to a safe house, the rest of the team shows up, and Zach's boss arrives that the whole thing spills out into the open. Doesn't change the fact that Fisher is still butt hurt about being lied to - never mind he was also lying to Zach. Semantics, AMIRITE?!
Stylistically this reminded me quite a bit of Dimon's work for Harlequin Intrigue. She doesn't waste any time and hits the ground running. It's an action movie, with that level of character development, in book format. Oh, the reader will get some character development over the course of the story, but it's fairly light in the pants, sprinkled in between gunfire, explosions and sexy bits. Most of the heavy lifting is done in the middle part of the book, when the entire team is stuck in a safe house together trying to figure out how to take down the bad buys. While there's several secondary characters running around, this middle portion takes on a claustrophobic feel similar to a snowed-in cabin vibe and keeps throwing our couple together to work out their problems and acknowledge their fee-fees. Seriously, these two dudes have baggage, but Fisher is especially pig-headed. The book clocks in at category length and that's a good thing - because all the mistrust and stubbornness would have worn me down to the nub had this been a single title.
It's not deep and it's not perfect but like any decent action movie it is entertaining. Also it does a very amiable job of setting up the second book in the series, which I plan on starting next. My reading mojo has been nonexistent and here's a wave coming along to take me out to sea. I'm grabbing my surf board.
Final Grade = B-
Well, now, I'm quite intrigued.
ReplyDeleteMind you, Ms Dimon straight (heh) romance is hit and miss for me, but I'm always happy to try romantic suspense by a competent writer, so on the list it goes.
Happy Pride!