Review
The second novel in the Bulletproof trilogy may not live up to the first, but it’s still a thrilling ride.
After being in the Witness Protection Program and changing her identity twice, Laurel Hodges has finally made a new life for herself and her two young kids in Montana.
But when a real estate agent in the town is brutally bludgeoned to death, Laurel can’t escape the fear that the gang members who’ve been hunting her have found her—and she’s right.
Sheriff Myles King lives next door to Laurel. He’s been drawn to her since she moved in, but she’s always kept him at arm’s length. She clearly has secrets, and Myles wants to earn her trust. But he has a long way to go, since he doesn’t even know her real name.
I devoured the first book in this series, INSIDE, and fell in love with its hero (Laurel’s brother Virgil, who joined the gang when he was in prison, before he was exonerated). I can’t quite say the same about IN SECONDS, though it’s still a gripping and emotional read.
Like INSIDE, this novel is jam-packed full of characters. I think it would be pretty difficult to follow who everyone is if you didn’t read INSIDE first. There are so many threads to the story that I sometimes felt Laurel and Myles didn’t get much time together, making the intimacy between them less intense than I’d wanted. Laurel seems to spend almost as much time thinking about her ex, Rex (aka Pretty Boy), as she does about Myles, even though her feelings for Rex have shifted toward friendship.
However, the suspense element of the novel works incredibly well. Brenda Novak is a master at cranking up the danger until every situation seems unwinnable. I stayed up way past my bedtime wondering how the characters I’d grown to love would ever fight off the baddies. When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I turned out the lights and realized I should never read a Brenda Novak novel when my husband’s out of town for the night. She had me truly terrified.
This series has made Brenda Novak one of my favorite romantic suspense novelists, and I’m looking forward to IN CLOSE, which comes out at the end of October.
Reviewed by Kat Latham