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Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense, Romance
Theme: Forced Proximity (stranded, safehouse, etc)
Archetype: STEM
Whiteout by Adriana Anders is a romantic suspense novel with elements of survival and espionage. The tropes are 100% Elyse-bait and the author’s ability to sell me on two people falling in love during some really dire circumstances was impressive. Despite this book being the first full book in a series, readers may want to read the prequel novella in Turn the Tide to be fully introduced to the secondary characters.
The book opens in Antarctica where Ford Cooper is working as a glaciologist and Angel Smith is a chef. Both of them have chosen their remote work site partly to distance themselves from their pasts. Angel is attracted to Ford, but put off by his cold and brusque demeanor.
Just as most of the crew (Angel included) is scheduled to leave for the off-season, the base is attacked. Some very bad people are after ice cores that Ford has been studying. They believe the ice cores contain a virus that would wreak havoc if released as a bio-weapon. All of this culminates in Angel and Ford having to ski to the next research station, hundreds of miles away, while dragging the cores on a sled and dealing with hurricane-force winds and deadly cold.
As much as the shadowy virus-hunting bad guys are the villain of this story, so is the environment. Ford and Angel are only able to make a handful of miles a day, have to ration their food, and are constantly worried about frostbite or painful blisters becoming infected. Added to that, Angel has an old knee injury that makes it hard for her to keep up with Ford. I could feel the desperation of their situation each time one of them wanted to break down, but kept pushing ahead.
All of that would be enough to make me curl up in the fetal position and give up, but Ford and Angel persevere. It becomes apparent that on their own, neither would make it. Instead they fight to survive for each other. When one is weak, physically or emotionally, the other acts as support. The theme of two people coming together when the odds are against them fit beautifully with the emotional intimacy they build.
Nights spent huddled up in their tent, listening to the howling winds, lead them to share things they normally kept bottled up. Angel reveals how she was betrayed by her last partner and was left broke and humiliated. Ford explains how he grew up with an alcoholic father, and how he struggles to interact with large groups of people at a time. Angel realizes that the man she thought was kind of an asshole is just overwhelmed when managing complex social interactions. All of this close-proximity, intimacy building worked really well for me. It allowed the characters to connect deeply in a relatively short period of time, so it made the romance believable. Romantic suspense often deals with condensed timeline and it can be hard to buy that the hero and heroine can fall in love in such a short, fraught time frame. Not here though. There’s also a poignancy to the hero and heroine falling in love while aware that their odds of survival were slim. Given their situation finding that emotional connection felt like a very human need.
They also avoid the whole “danger boner” aspect of being in immediate danger but still having time to get it on. Because of the cold, sex is impossible (or at least extremely ill-advised) and the author gives them time to take a bath before sexy times ever occur since we can safely assume they’d be pretty stinky at that point.
The only thing I didn’t like about this book was that by the latter half, I felt like I’d entered the series somewhere in the middle. Ford’s brother, Eric, who plays an important role in the novel, was previously introduced in the anthology Turn the Tide. I hadn’t read it yet, and I felt that a lot of details about Eric that were super important to his book were covered previously. Eric is no stranger to the world of scary bad men hunting Antarctic viruses, and when he showed up his backstory was a lot to swallow in one chunk. That being said, I was able to use context clues to put everything together and I downloaded Turn the Tide immediately.
I do want to warn readers that while Ford and Angel get their HEA, the book ends on something of a cliffhanger. I assume the suspense arc will be carried through the other novels in the series, so if you need total closure, you might want to hold off until the series is done.
I love romantic suspense with survival elements (especially cold weather survival) and I also really enjoyed the espionage/global threat aspect of the mystery. I wish I’d read the prequel novella first, but it wasn’t a huge issue, and I’m delighted to have a new series to look forward to.
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I downloaded this the other day (when it was on sale for 99-cents) and am looking forward to reading it. I do want to say one thing: TURN THE TIDE is the anthology where the prequel to WHITEOUT can be found, but the actual title of the novella is DEEP BLUE. The last time I checked, TURN THE TIDE was free in the kindle store.
I also picked it up on 99cent sale and actually read it right away-that never happens! We haven’t gotten too much snow this winter, and I wanted to be cozy reading about snow without having to shovel any. Perfect. 🙂
Yeah, I need to read that novella. It was fine to read Whiteout without it, as their romance completely stood on its own. But I had a bit of “wait-what? who? how?” with the suspense plot in the second half. Not enough to stop me from enjoying the book though.
I was happy with their HEA. Usually these sort of starts to a relationship make me think they won’t make it in boring daily life, but we’d probably (I hope) see more of them in the rest of the series. I had wished we saw the heroine tell the hero her backstory a bit more. It was in a flashback, which-fair. They were quietly walking or huddled to stay warm for a lot of time, so it did help keep the pacing. And I did like the pacing – part of the novel had chapters that started with how far they have to go and how much food they had. This is why I read romance – I can’t take much of that tension when I don’t know there will be an HEA.
This has been getting some pretty good reviews; looking forward to reading it!
Want! If anyone is interested in the Antarctic theme in general, Amalie Berlin recently published Reunited in the Snow in the Harlequin Medical line. I haven’t read it yet, mainly because Harlequin just switched their ereader situation AGAIN and I have to sort it out, but her previous couple-against-the-elements book Rescued by Her Rival was so, so good.
I started this but couldnt get into it! Maybe I’ll try again later in a different mood, it seems like it worked for everyone else here!
I really liked this one! I hadn’t read anything by Anders before. It might be because I’ve read a lot of Nora Roberts lately, but I got some strong Roberts suspense vibes from this, in a good way. I’m not usually into paramilitary secret organization type stuff, but I’m looking forward to the next one in the series.
If you liked this book, here is a similar book recimmendation: The Winter Over, by Matthew Iden. It’s more of a mystery/ psychological thriller with a romantic possibility. Highly recommend.
Another request is for Sarah, can you do a rec League for stranded or trapped romance? E.g. Battling remoteness or harsh weather romance?
That is my catnip of all time
WHY YES. YES WE CAN! Thanks for the suggestion, Inga!
Update: it seems we already have rather recently – here you go! https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2019/05/the-rec-league-survival-romance/
I liked it, but the ending felt rushed and Ford acted completely out of character at the end when he told Angel he wasn’t interested, after they’d already exchanged I-love-you’s (albeit under dire circumstances). It felt like the author forced in an Intense Black Moment where it really wasn’t needed–they’d suffered enough–and it diminished their relationship in my eyes.
The setting was visceral and described really well: I actually felt cold reading this!
I loved this book. I loved how practical they were….no sex in the below freezing temps! I’m very into exploring harsh environments, so that probably helped, and their journey was actually believable.