This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Notorious SSF. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.
The summary:
Reformed assassin Cristan Rojas just wants to raise his daughter in peace. But after twelve years on the run, he learns that even the quiet little town of Westbury, Pennsylvania, has many hidden dangers. Although he can’t shake the feeling he’s under surveillance, Cristan’s attraction to Sarah Mitchell continues to grow, as do his concerns that his secret past could jeopardize anyone who gets too close to him.
Sarah is ready to start her life over with her children, a new job, and a budding romance. Her newfound happiness is threatened when her ex-husband becomes increasingly violent—and she soon learns her ex isn’t the only person stalking her.
Cristan fears someone from his past has arrived in town, someone far worse than a jealous ex. Someone who may be responsible for a brutal—and unsolved—murder a dozen years ago. To protect Sarah and his daughter, he must shine a light into the darkest recesses of his nightmarish past.
Here is Notorious SSF's review:
A man and his young daughter go on the run when Argentinian arms dealers massacre his family. After more than a decade of running, the man finally settles down in Small Town, USA, where his now-teenaged daughter can put down roots, and he can pine for the recently-divorced mother of two with an abusive ex-husband who is begging for a manly beat-down. When the man survives a convenience store robbery and discovers the event might have been a calling card from his past, will he give up everything and run once again, or finally face his demons and maybe dip his wang back in the pool while he’s at it?
Sounds exciting, right?
Well you would be WRONG, madam! Despite an exciting premise, She Can Kill is burdened with uninteresting characters and a languid pace until a burst of crazy sauce at the end finally livens things up. The result isn’t terrible, but it’s a lot more boring than it should have been.
Cristan is the aforementioned man on the run, and Sarah is the potential love interest being harassed by her psycho ex-husband. The hero has the hotness thing going for him, as well as a huge dash of doting single dad-ness—i.e. the perfect father, while the heroine is the Wounded Dove: pure, innocent, and loving—i.e. the perfect mother. We’re told they pine for each other from afar, and everyone in their sleepy hamlet notices their intense attraction, but seriously—these two generate about as many sparks as a wereshark’s ass, possibly less.
Cristan and Sarah have no discernible flaws—the things that make people interesting—aside from some bad decisions they made in the past. Authors of all genres make this mistake, and I wish I could scream this truth from the hilltops of Romancelandia: a tragic past does not in and of itself make a character interesting! It’s how that past affects who they are in their present day that makes them interesting. Cristan is rightly paranoid about being followed, and he regrets his violent past (he was forced into it!) and lying to his daughter about it (he had to!), but otherwise he’s a perfect specimen of a man. Sarah is struggling for independence after getting out of a hellish marriage, and…that’s it. She’s just a super-nice lady. While I sympathized with Sarah, and the author does a good job illustrating how difficult it can be to get out of an abusive relationship, her extreme blandness kept me from mustering the energy to care about her and Cristan’s budding romance.
None of the other characters in the story leave much of an impression, with two notable exceptions. Sarah’s ex-husband, Troy, is so cartoonishly villainous that at one point he actually says, “If I can’t have you, no one will!” His main purpose in the story seemed to be to show how capable Cristan is at protecting his woman via hand-to-hand combat, and to give Sarah an excuse to tell anyone who asks that she can fix the Troy Problem on her own, thereby establishing her spunk and worth as a love interest. Also, Troy provides the Reason to Send the Kids Away So We Can Do the Sexy Time, which is apparently a thing now? Well I guess you can’t really get your freak on with kids in the next room over…except married couples do this all the time (that’s what door locks are for), but whatever.
And while I’m at it—why do parents in romance novels need to declare how much they love their children about eight thousand times? I don’t recall seeing this kind of obsession with proving parental love in other genres, though I could be mistaken. Seriously, about a third of the verbiage in the book was devoted to convincing readers beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cristan and Sarah LOVE THEIR CHILDREN, DAMMIT. Like if they said they loved their children only four thousand times, we wouldn’t believe it.
Anyway, back on topic—the only other character who left an impression besides Troy was the person stalking Cristan whose identity is revealed about 86% of the way through the book (I know because I kept checking to see how much story was left), at which point a crazy sauce explosion occurred.
If it wasn’t for the exciting turn at the end of the book (unfortunately followed by a boring epilogue), I would have rated this book lower, but the writing was decent and there wasn’t anything really objectionable about the story. I’ve read worse. If hot but boring dudes are your thing, go nuts.
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Love your review, thanks for taking one for the team.
As a KU reader, I get daily updates from Amazon suggesting various books… and so many of the romantic suspense books sound like this. I’ve actually given up on the genre because of the number of bad, bland and blah books I’ve read or DNF’d.
I’ve read a few of Melinda Leigh’s books and enjoyed them – though, I agree, this one falls short. I would recommend giving some of her other books a read though if you’re a romantic suspense reader.