Deadly Obsession by Katie Reus
Romantic Suspense
August 15, 2011
E-Book
Carina Press

Reviewed by Mandi

I love reading romantic suspense stories that have a really creepy villain. In this book, we definitely get that. We get his point of view, and he is a very bad dude. He kills, tortures, and gets sexually turned on by all that he does. But when you have a villain this nasty, the hero and heroine have to act accordingly, and this is where the majority of my problems with Deadly Obsession come into play.

Lily Carmichael comes back to her hometown ten years after she left due to the death of her aunt. As the reader, you know the villain killed the aunt, and set up her death as an accident, just to lure Lily back home. Lily was an analyst for the NSA, but a few years later, was recruited as an undercover agent. We also learn she is quite accomplished:

“I have a Master’s in criminology, which you might already know. I have experience in prisoner handling, tactical evasive driving. I’ve been on numerous domestic and international anti-terrorism operations working with various joint task-forces involving the FBI, CIA, and the DEA. Uh, I’m also trained in reconnaissance and surveillance, foreign weapons and communications, and I have current DOD top secret clearance. There’s more, but that’s the basics.”

Okay, so Lily is not some innocent, naïve civilian. Based on her description, she knows her stuff. A year ago, she was on assignment in Africa when things went wrong. Held and tortured in a prison cell for some time before being rescued, she is still recovering from this traumatic event. She is in therapy, and dealing with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Braden is the sheriff of Hudson Bay and has been hunting a killer for the past year. The killer has left several victims and now after a woman from a different town, who Braden briefly dated turns up murdered with the same calling card, he realizes all the victims have some sort of relationship to him. Now that Lily is back in town, he must warn her (since they were high school sweethearts) that she could be in danger herself. Braden has never found out why Lily left him so abruptly in their young adult days, and tensions are high between them. But he must keep her safe.

From here the story goes downhill. Quick. Lily sees a masked man at her kitchen window on two different occasions. One time he is even waving a knife around. But, she knows she is suffering from PTSD and she thinks it must be a hallucination. We go through one of those situations where she almost tells Braden about the man at the window, but then decides it must be her PTSD and he would think her crazy. There is man targeting women that have a connection to Braden, and with all of her training, she doesn’t think this is something she should mention? Really? Her other excuse is that none of the other victims called in any stalker threats, so this masked man can’t be real because the other victims would have reported him looking in their kitchen windows. Huh?

It takes getting locked in a coffin by this masked man (he is real! gasp!) for her to admit that she has seen him before.

And then this villain starts killing – like every day. Woman are dropping like flies. The FBI can’t come because they have bigger cases. Huh? Even a woman from Lily’s life back at NSA gets murdered. And yet, Lily is still stunned when she finally realizes her aunt was murdered. Really? If she really had that kind of an education, training, and professional experience, her actions in this book just don’t support that. I also felt the lust that builds up between Braden and Lily didn’t feel appropriate. With ALL the murders, and the absolute gruesome nature of the murders, how can they even feel heat between them? Lily is just dense. Like after someone breaks into her aunts house (this is after several murders)

She hated the fact that someone had just broken into her aunt’s house with seemingly no motive but she really hated that she’d created this chasm between her and Braden. The ache between her legs wasn’t going away any time soon and neither was the growing ache in her heart.

Hello! Someone breaks into your aunt’s house – where you are staying. Where your aunt was murdered – and there is no motive? And all you can’t think about is “the chasm” with Braden. Makes no sense.

The villain did surprise me. I liked how he turned out to be. But it was a little too late to save the story for me.

Rating: D

Recent Reviews:
The Book Pushers – C-
Badass Book Reviews – 3.5/5
Book Lovers Inc – 4/5
Reading Between the Wines – 4/5
Goodreads

Author’s Website

Kindle l Nook l Sony