An Eye For Danger by Christine M. Fairchild
June 28, 2012
Romantic Suspense
Self Published

Reviewed by Mandi

It’s hard for me to find new romantic suspense authors I like. I find that most of the books in this genre I try, fizzle out in the middle. And that kind of happened with this book. Maybe fizzled isn’t quite the word I’m looking for, but I think this book would have been much better had it not been so long. It has a really strong, great start and I love the set-up. But by the end I was tired. I just wanted everything to wrap-up, secrets to come out and have my happily ever after. Let me talk about the beginning though, because it really captivated me.

Jules Larson is a photographer who used to shoot photos in war ravaged countries. But the constant starving, beaten children became too much for her. Dragging herself back to New York City, her life takes a devastating turn just a few months later when her fiancé dies in a car explosion. Jules becomes a recluse, rarely leaving her apartment except for the odd photo job, and making no new memories for herself. But one day, with her trusted dog Max, she decides to brave a jog through the park, the same park where her fiancé proposed. Trying to fight the rising panic, she inadvertently runs past a group of thugs who are beating each other up. She sees someone dead too. She tries to avoid them, but she is spotted. Chaos ensues. After the police arrive, Jules’s dog runs away, and as she runs to catch him, one of the thugs grabs her and holds her hostage so he can escape the park and the police. This guy’s name is Sam. During the struggle, Sam actually saves Jules from being harmed by one of the other bad guys. Sam gets badly injured during this, and needs Jules’s help to escape. Through a series of events, he ends up at her apartment. Jules is still kind of a hostage yet she slowly comes around to trust him. I know that sounds abrupt, but it makes sense in the book. I think the author does a really nice job making Sam the rough bad guy to someone Jules trusts and eventually falls for.

Sam is actually an undercover cop, and a whole mess of events happen. There is no point in getting into what happens and who is bad and who is good. There is a ton of action, a ton of violence….and lots of secrets. Like I said, I was pretty riveted the first half of this book. Lots of twists and turns and I really like how the author develops Jules and Sam. They have depth and intrigue and I enjoyed how they fell for each other.

My main complaint is that this story is too long winded. I got bored and tired by the end. Pretty much every single thing you can imagine happening to the heroine, happens. Everything explodes. Everything comes down around her. She suffers every injury. After awhile enough was enough. The other thing that didn’t sit with me well is how much Jules didn’t know about Sam. She knows he is undercover, but she never really asks him why. Or what his end game is. Or anything about anything. He tells her once he can’t say anything and she just goes with it. Meanwhile she is hiding him in her house, tending his wounds – basically risking her life for him. It felt like the author didn’t want the reader to know his secrets, so she didn’t let the heroine know either. And it didn’t make a lot of sense for that to happen with Jules’s personality.

I also got frustrated with how Jules loves Sam and then doesn’t trust him, and then loves him and then doesn’t trust him. It got old. Again, if this book had ended sooner, this frustration probably wouldn’t have come up.

Rating: C

Recent Reviews:
Ms. Romantic Reads – 5/5
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