This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Mara. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.

Here is Mara's review:

I picked this book because it’s rare that I strike out with the first in a series and keep going with another installment. Once bitten, twice shy, you know? But while I didn’t enjoy the first book, I have enjoyed a couple of the author’s novellas, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for an experiment: giving series with a disappointing first book another shot.

I am a firm believer in ditching books if you get to the point where you aren’t enjoying them. If I get to that point, I’ll usually skip to the final chapter to get a gist of the wrap up and then go on with my life. In general, this has been a great policy for my reading life. I mean, I have a hefty personal TBR list (*cough* 432 books *cough*) and a nearly as large library wish list, so I don’t have time to dilly-dally with books that aren’t working for me. I am not hurting for new things to read. But it’s hit me recently that if I bail on a first book in a series, I usually end up skipping the rest of the series and thus am likely missing out on later books that I would like a lot better. Thinking back on my favorite series, nine times out of ten the first book is not nearly as good as later ones once the author picks up steam with the plot arcs and characters.

Which brings us to this book…that I unfortunately did not finish. Now, let me say from the get-go: if you liked earlier books in this series, I think you will like this book, as it’s very much in the same vein of the first book in the series that I DNFed. I should also say that I really do like HelenKay Dimon’s writing. She has a distinctive cadence to her sentences that I have enjoyed in some of her straight-up contemporaries, and I do think she handled the team dynamics very nicely. I got the sense that characters who had worked together in the Alliance knew each other and had a history together, which is certainly to the author’s credit. I also liked that the heroine was competent and had basically already figured a lot of shit out before the hero ever showed up. I feel like in any kind of action-based story, it’s very easy to get into OG Donkey Kong territory where the princess is in the villain’s clutches crying, while the hero tries his darnedest to save her—what I read of this book didn’t have any hint of that, so that’s a big plus.

So why didn’t I finish this book? I just didn’t buy the romantic element. I didn’t feel like Josiah and Sutton had any actual connection, and since the action elements weren’t clicking with me either, there was just no real reason to keep moving forward. This was the same problem I found with the first book in the series, and I would say that’s the real hinge point of enjoyment of this one. Try reading a sample and if the action hooks you, you’ll probably like the rest of the story. If it doesn’t, maybe proceed with caution. It also had the “I’m back, bitches” arch-nemesis, who the protagonists failed to properly kill in the previous book, which always annoys me in any action or horror story.

Though it did lead to the one line that actually made me LOL:

“He survived.” Mike shook his head. “We lit him on fire with a rocket launcher months ago and he lived.”

That is indeed pretty impressive. Basically, I think the stars just did not align for me with this book or series.

I’m glad I gave this book a shot. If nothing else, writing this review finally helped me understand what I do and don’t tend to like in romantic suspense. I’m down with romantic mystery suspense (the romance equivalent of something like The Pelican Brief). I’m down with romantic action adventure (the romance equivalent of something like Indiana Jones). But romantic action suspense (the romance equivalent of something like The Bourne Identity) is not quite my jam. So my final takeaway? I’ll lean into HelenKay Dimon’s contemporaries, but maybe give the whole romantic action genre the cold shoulder.