It Had to Be You

by Eliza Jane Brazier

It Had to be You is a Mr. and Mrs. Smith style romance novel about two assassins who fall in love while also trying to kill each other. It’s a book that I loved, but will either work really, really well for someone or not at all. Neither of the main characters, Jonathan or Eva, are good people—they are both contract killers so that shouldn’t be a surprise—and I think some readers will struggle with empathizing with them.

When Jonathan and Eva first meet they’re on a sleeper train from Florence to Paris. Sparks fly and they hook up, but Eva is hurt when Jonathan disappears after. Turns out that he passed out in the bathroom because he’s been nursing a bullet wound.

When Jonathan comes to, he becomes obsessed with tracking down the woman from the train. Meanwhile, Eva learns the target of her next hit is, in fact, Jonathan.

This book completely worked for me. Jonathan and Eva aren’t necessarily good people, but they certainly are compelling to read about. They both also have significant past trauma that explains how they wound up in their current professions. They are both morally questionable, damaged people, and are self aware enough to realize that. They are both awed by the fact that they found another person that understands them.

It Had to be You also has a lot of morbid humor, which I think is necessary to lighten up the mood when dealing with this kind of subject matter. It’s a wry look at the absurdity of two broken people jet-setting across Europe while having sex and maybe trying to kill each other (not really trying) and falling in love. There’s borderline hate sex, fencing as foreplay, day drinking,  and questionable moral choices galore.

If you like an edgier romance, I would recommend It Had to Be You, but if you need your main characters redeemable, you might want to steer clear.

– Elyse

Two contract killers, each with a hit out on the other, must fight their growing attraction as they face off in an epic game of lust and murder across Western Europe.

When Eva and Jonathan hook up on the sleeper train from Florence to Paris, they think they’ll never see each other again. Which is too bad, because neither has ever felt a spark like this for another person. But love isn’t on the agenda in their line of work.

Six months later, they run into each other in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. This encounter is not by chance, because Eva has been hired to kill Jonathan. She’s a contract killer, but what she doesn’t know is that he is too.

Their meeting kicks off a high-stakes adventure across Western Europe. There will be tourism. There will be bodies.  Eva and Jonathan might even fall for each other.

As the two get closer to completing their assignments, it becomes clear that they are also being hunted—by something even more dangerous than love. . . .

Contemporary Romance, Mystery/Thriller, Romantic Suspense, Romance