(2.5 / 5)
There is something about a good romantic suspense. The thrills and danger puts you in a certain frame of mind, so that when the romance hits, when it is done well, it’s breathtaking… I had to give these short stories a go after I saw the cover.. But the cover was a bit deceiving, I would read ANYTHING Sandra Brown writes, but she only edited it and did a brief sentence or two to introduce you to all the stories. I guess they did the cover for suckers like me who see Sandra Brown and go “OK IM READING IT!”. Having said that though, some of the stories were really good, however others were not so good.
I’m not going to go through all the stories as there were WAY too many of them to review one at a time. So I will mention the stand outs. I really enjoyed “Hot Note” even though it was more a paranormal story. Last Shot was another stand out about a very special scanning machine. Again more paranormal, but it was a great story! I also enjoyed Without Mercy, far from a romance I thought, but a great story… I guess the better ones for me were actually the ones with a better story and less romance. I felt a bit let down by the quality of the stories to be honest.
I can see how it is difficult to develop romantic suspense in a short story. After all it takes tension to get a good romantic build up. Therefore the majority of the stories involved two people who already know each other, and have been apart for a while, only to come back together. This is fine and lovely, but it got old after a while. The only story I feel that got a good new romance blossoming with an original story was the first one, Diamond Drop. I felt this was extremely clever compared to the others. Otherwise the story was about a couple who were already an item and something else happens to bring them closer together. These stories got old fast too.
I just didn’t love it enough to rate it higher. The good stories did not outweigh the average ones in my opinion, and for a compilation of romantic suspense stories, I felt a lot of suspense, but was totally let down in the romance department!
And that last story?? WTF was that Lee Child?? That was the first Lee Child writing I have ever read and its not making me want to pick up any Jack Reacher books any time soon!
The narration however, was superb! How fantastic were Christopher Lane and Shannon McManus! They totally salvaged this book for me! I am so glad I had listened to the narration rather than read it, because I don’t know if I would have made it through otherwise!
Would I recommend it?
As I said, a few of the stories were good, however mostly It was a bit of a let down. If you are interested, the audio version was really well done and made it much more enjoyable.
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