This RITA® Reader Challenge 2013 review was written by KellyM. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.

The summary:     

Searching for a sunken ship off the coast of Peru, treasure hunter Logan Cutter manages to pull a very different kind of prize from the sea — beautiful mystery woman Daniela Rosada. Dani claims she has no memory of how she ended up lost at sea.

But with millions of dollars in treasure at stake, Logan suspects she's not telling him the truth…and he's right. Dani has good cause to hide the facts from Logan. If he knew her real reason for being onboard his ship, he'd throw her back overboard in a heartbeat.

But the closer they get, the deeper she falls for him – and the more he lowers his own powerful defenses. Little do they both know that by falling in love, they've set a course for disaster.

And here is Kelly's review:

It has been a long time since I’ve read romantic suspense, but this one was calling my name.  A dive team searching for centuries-old treasure off the coast of Peru?  A damsel in distress saved by an alpha hero?  And that drool-inducing cover?  Yes, yes, and yes – sign me up!

It took me a couple of false starts to get past the first chapter or so.  The book dumps us very unceremoniously into the middle of Daniela’s nightmarish situation, much like she was dumped into the middle of the ocean.  This is the third book in Adair’s Cutter Cay series, and at least one T-FLAC operative who shows up in this story also has his own book too.  So, this being my first Adair book, there was a lot of back story that I was missing here, and I’m thinking the first couple of chapters of this book would’ve been easier to get through if I had read Adair’s other related books first.  On the other hand, there is a lot of data dumping going on in the first couple of chapters, which may have been annoying to me if I already knew these characters from previous books.  So…damned if you do, damned if you don’t I guess.

Once the book really took off, though, it was very difficult to put down.  Adair is adept at building sexual and emotional tension between the two main characters.  Logan is a great alpha-protector hero.  I liked watching him struggle to fit Daniela (who feeds him fabrications from the get-go) into his ‘no lies for any reason’ philosophy.  It was also fun to watch Logan goof around with all his buddies.  It seems like the supporting characters in most romances are the girlfriends of the heroine, so it was nice seeing a bunch of dudes living and working together.  Daniela walks the line between damsel in distress and takes-care-of-herself tough girl very well.  At first I thought I wasn’t going to like her – she seemed almost too tough for me.  Thankfully, Adair does a great job of showing us her vulnerabilities as well as her toughness.  She’s terrified by what’s going on around her, and rightfully so, but she generally keeps it together and works through her fear like a champ.  And she manages to not do anything stupid along the way, too.  Bonus points for the heroine with a brain!

The action gets a little garbled in places and it was sometimes difficult for my brain to figure out where everyone was supposed to be in some scenes.  For example, at one point Logan punched Derek Wright in the stomach and then “stalked away”.  Then (after some internal ruminating) Logan stood up while Derek was relaying the latest news to everyone.  Wait….huh?  Wasn’t he already standing when he hit Derek?  And hadn’t he left the room with the ‘stalking away’ bit?  I had to go back a re-read a few times to try to figure out if I missed something.  This kind of thing happened a few times during sex and/or action scenes and it was a little distracting.

Overall, Vortex was a fun read and I’ll definitely consider reading the other two books in the Cutter Cay series.  These would be wonderful middle-of-winter, why-did-I-move-to-Chicago, Caribbean escapism books.

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