2 stars I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. It sounded pretty good, and I suppose the concept was good, but it quickly turned didactic and preachy. I persevered. Still, when the narrative turned toward statistics on child abduction and kidnapping, I hesitated, not because I don’t think it’s important, but because it was too cumbersome a topic to cover in a romance. In one part, characters were talking about babies being cut from the bellies of pregnant women to be sold on the black market. In the next breath, characters were lusting after one another. Many characters were introduced in an obvious attempt to build a community about which other love stories could be written. Perhaps some already have been, but I don’t have sufficient interest to check. Foreshadowing was heavy-handed. Marlee repeatedly feels like someone is watching her, almost as if she has ESP. We are introduced to the character of Stella, the villain, who knows Marlee's mom Diane somehow and has been advised to kill off Marlee to avoid being caught. She chooses not to do so, not wanting to cause additional pain to Diane, but it’s clear that decision will be revisited later in the story. In addition to a story about a police officer turned private investigator searching for lost children, the plot revolves around a love story between Marlee and Cooper. Terms used to describe their initial reactions to one another are predictable and over-used (a jolt when they first touch, and similar tropes). The occasional introduction of a bodily reaction during a particular interaction, when the two characters have not yet been intimate, are jarring. I won’t include examples because they are icky. Unfortunately, the love scenes follow the expected course and are extremely uncomfortable. In fact, after the first time they went to bed together, I tapped out. I grimaced through most of it, and finally gave up. I could see too clearly where the plot was going, and the writing wasn’t good enough, the characters not engaging enough, to maintain my interest. October 31, 2020
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Elizabeth J ConnorWriter. Editor. Proofreader. Archives
September 2022
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