If the Key Fits by Stephanie Blakeman
Contemporary Romance
August 4, 2015
Self published

Reviewed by Helyce

This story starts off by setting a really dark tone as we meet our heroine in a flashback scene where she’s soaking in a tub, trying to recover after being gang raped and beaten by club members on the instructions of her boyfriend Frank Bishop, aka Slayer.  It’s not the first time, but it’s bad and she is so close to letting the blackness take her over when strong hands pull her out and medics are there to take care of her.  

Jump forward a year or so and we see Casey Calvert in a completely different role, one she’d always hoped to have.  She’s in a new town, working as a nurse and has a very nice man in her life who she plans to marry.  She’s made new friends, who she cares about and who care about her and she has done her best to distance herself from her previous life.  No one knows where she came from or any of the horrific experiences she had before she moved here.

Gavin Matthews is a special agent who did his best to protect Casey when he was working undercover posing as a club member under the name of Blaze.  Over the time he was a part of the club he met and fell for Casey-breaking the number one rule of being undercover by getting involved with the person he was supposed to protect.  And he let her down, he didn’t keep her safe and he lives with that every single day of his life.

When Gavin learns that Frank Bishop is to be released on a technicality because Casey had chosen not to press charges for the rape, Gavin is once against assigned to protect Casey and he’s determined to succeed this time no matter what it takes.

I liked Casey.  In spite of her horrific background, she’d moved forward and hadn’t let her experiences stunt her or keep her feeling like a victim.  She’d already had her nursing degree, so moving to a new town, getting a job and meeting a man were all positive things that showed me she was a strong woman.  But you can’t help but get the feeling that she’s really not happy.  It’s as if she’s playing the role of the woman she thought she should be.  There are flashback memory scenes of Casey as a child with her father who was the original president of the club.  These scenes made it feel like there was an expectation that at some point Casey would have an important position within the club.  Frank Bishop is the son of the man who was Casey’s dad’s second in command, so I was not surprised that Casey and Frank had been an item with the philosophy of the club and how positions are passed on.  **Thank you Sons of Anarchy**

I also really liked Gavin, but I’m a bit unclear as to why he was tasked with infiltrating the club in the first place.  He goes through the whole prospect/initiation process and becomes a full fledged member when Casey’s dad was still alive. Then Casey’s dad and Slayer’s dad are killed and Slayer automatically takes over.  Casey and Slayer are a couple when Blaze starts an affair with Casey and when Slayer finds out he orders the gang rape. Gavin gets pulled and gets placed in protective custody.  He’d thought that had happened for Casey too, but she had declined.

The bulk of this story centers on Casey and Gavin coming together again when Slayer is released and the ATF is sure that he will target Casey once again.  But Casey is with someone else when Gavin intrudes into her life and Casey’s fiance, Ryan, isn’t happy.  I had a lot of issues with the character of Ryan and his little side story that ran parallel to what Casey and Gavin were experiencing.  I didn’t like him and I didn’t trust him.  I didn’t buy his goody two-shoes persona and with good reason as the story shows a bit down the line. Unfortunately, I figured out much too early the part he was playing and it did ruin the story a bit for me.

This is not your typical MC story.  In fact this is not your typical romance because, sadly, there is no HEA. This is Blakeman’s debut book, and I liked the premise and thought it had potential but for me the story was very choppy in areas.  There are ideas or thoughts introduced, but they are not carried through and I was left with a sense that I was missing something. While I could keep up with whatever Gavin and Casey were doing in the present, flashback scenes or side stories didn’t always track. The lack of HEA came as a shock to me and disappointed me a bit.  After all the characters had gone through, how could there not be an HEA? Too predictable once certain things are revealed, and a few loose ends that needed tightening up.

Rating: D

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