Falling for Danger by Chanel Cleeton (Capitol Confessions #3)
Released: September 15, 2015
Contemporary Romance
Penguin Intermix

Reviewed by Mandi

Overall, I’ve enjoyed this series. This author has a smart, sexy voice and each of the three books have had a different feeling. In Falling for Danger, we go to more of a suspense side. At the age of sixteen, Kate got her first kiss from her best friend Matt on her birthday, and they fell in love. A few years later they get engaged, and after Matt graduated college, he decided to enlist. Kate was totally fine with this decision, and Matt headed to Afghanistan. He joined a Special Forces unit, and then Kate received the news everyone dreads – his entire unit was killed in action.

Now four years later, Kate is still devastated – but she is also angry. She overheard a conversation her high-powered Senator father had one night, and she thinks he and Matt’s dad’s (who owns a security company) is somehow involved in Matt’s death. Kate will stop at nothing to find the truth. As a new CIA agent assigned to middle eastern affairs, she hopes maybe a shred of evidence involving her fiance’s death will come her way.

Our hero Matt isn’t dead! Spoiler alert! His team did die in an ambush that night, but Matt survived, pretending to be dead these past four years to keep Kate safe and try to figure out what happened. But now he is back in DC, keeping an eye on the unsuspecting Kate. When he sees a professional burglar enter Kate’s apartment one night, he runs in to protect her. Now Kate knows he is alive and wants answers. Together they try to bring down Kate’s father and rekindle their love.

The prologue and first chapter of this book gave me the chills. I love their young declaration of love in the prologue and I love the moment Matt comes back from the dead and reenters Kate’s life. It was moving and intense and you know their reunion would be full of crazy, mixed emotion. Matt left for the army as more of a preppy guy, and has returned a different man. Physically more powerful, and mentally with a lot of dark demons. It’s candy for a romance reader. Kate has changed too from a young, carefree girl to a CIA agent willing to take down her family.

Their reunion is intense, yet something still bothered me about it. I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact thing – except to say something was missing. I think it felt a little too predictable. I wanted them to acknowledge their absolute true love they shared before Matt left – to show the devastation they have been separately going through for four years. I think that is what was missing – acknowledging the hell emotionally they went through. That might have been glossed over a bit.

This is petty – but at one point Kate states that she hasn’t had any sexual relations, not even a kiss, from anyone else in four years. At another point, Matt tells the reader that of course he has had sex – sad sex, but sex nonetheless in these four years. I don’t know why this bothers me – I get he is “dead” and thinks he will never see Kate again, but I don’t know why this has to be told to the reader. For what purpose?

Anyway, the other thing that bothered me about this book is the suspense. I enjoyed it for most of the book – it kept me turning the pages for sure. But I didn’t like how it was all resolved in the end. I felt like the suspense was so – big – and the way she resolves it through the political gossip blog – eh – I didn’t care for it. Let me also point out that the inclusion of the gossip blog throughout the series has not been a favorable point for me.

Overall though I still had fun reading this one. I peeked at the author’s next series coming out in 2016 and it involves sexy airforce pilots and I’m all about that!

Grade: C+

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