San Francisco police detective, Manhattan Sloane lost
her parents in a car crash and resultantly has developed huge emotional walls.
CSI, Avery Santos somehow manages to get to Sloane and they get married. Sloane
is on a case involving drug dealers when DEA Agent Finn Harper arrives
to join the investigation. The Feds believe that this is a multi-state ring and
have every intention of bringing in the big brain behind the whole set-up. Finn
is Sloane’s school crush and Sloane finds the attraction still there, only
latent and simmering instead of flaming. During a raid and the subsequent crime
scene investigation, a rigged bomb explodes and Avery is a fatality.
We DNF-d the book at this point.
We have some pet peeves and thoughtless playing with people’s
hearts ranks right up there. Without exception, when the MC is a player, we
actively don’t like them. There are times when we are able to still read
through and complete the book (mostly when there is no cavalier breaking of
anyone’s heart involved). So Sloane set our teeth on edge right away.
Despite being married and co-parenting Avery’s daughter,
Sloane hasn’t given Avery the comfort and confidence of being loved and of
Sloane having left her player past behind. Sloane doesn’t tell Avery about Finn’s
reappearance in her life. Of an innocent-but-no-entirely-innocent hug. When
Avery dies, she is feeling unloved and distanced. Which is unforgiveable
especially since Avery is extremely loving and took big risks in loving and pursuing
Sloane. Avery deserved better from her partner.
We also get upset when characters we like die. And we
really, really liked Avery.
What we can say is that the writing is solid because it made
us feel. What we can also say with confidence is that we’d have continued
disliking Sloane for everything she’d been in the first half of the book.
So if you don’t have the same reservations about and MC
casually breaking hearts and if you don’t have the same ideals and expectations
from love as we do, this one should work for you. It didn’t for us.
PS: Despite DNF-ing this one, we are giving it two stars instead of zero because we really, really, really liked Avery and we also liked what little we read of Finn. Plus, we also felt the writing was good.
⭐⭐
