Dark Deceptions
Author: Dee Davis
Publisher: Grand Central
Pub. Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0446542012
Retail: $6.99
353 pagesTORN BETWEEN DUTY AND DESIRE
Covert operations expert Nash Brennon has spent the last eight years trying to forget Annie Gallagher, his former field partner and the only woman he ever loved. Annie betrayed him when he needed her most, then vanished without a trace. Now suddenly she’s back in the game—this time as a suspected traitor and threat to national security.
Annie’s son has been kidnapped by political terrorists. The price for his life? Assassinate a UN ambassador. Then Nash finds her, and immediately, the smoldering passion between Annie and the man she swore she’d never contact again almost blazes out of control. But can Nash trust her? The stakes couldn’t be higher: their enemy’s endgame is personal, and one false move could cost them their lives.
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Fans of Roxanne St. Clair and Suzanne Brockmann will love this new series by Dee Davis.
Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the following authors. I love romantic suspense novels, but I prefer suspense novels that are more character driven in the style of J.D. Robb and Linda Howard instead of story or plot driven like DARK DECEPTIONS. Having said that, DARK DECEPTIONS is a suspenseful, well-written novel. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.
It took me awhile to read DARK DECEPTIONS because I couldn’t get a grasp of the characters’ or deeper insight into their internal motivation. In my humble opinion, DARK DECEPTIONS had too little back story and narrative, which made it hard to see where Annie and Nash were coming from. For example, there was a big betrayal that separated Nash and Annie years ago, both think of it but not in detail just anger over the other one for not being there. Since this is the big conflict of the book it is annoying there isn’t more details of why. Because of it, the major conflict feels like some big misunderstanding that could’ve been resolved if they just sat down and talked together. As a result, the big misunderstanding seems like something that happened to immature people instead mature professionals, especially considering the jobs they had.
Despite my being unable to being able to buy into the romantic relationship and conflict between the hero and heroine, the suspense part was excellent and carried the story for me.
So I truly think fans of Roxanne St. Clair, Allison Brennan, and Suzanne Brockmann have a new author that they can become addicted to.
Rating: 6 (Satisfactory)
Heat-Level: 4 (Hot)
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The excerpt listed is actually for Stolen Promises I believe.
Just to let you know. 🙂
Carol L.
Yea, I’m like you about the liking a book becasse of the character driven aspect so I’m not sure if I will like the book.
Thanks for your review and honest opinions of this book. You hit on something that tends to pull me from a story. Books with either too much information or not enough detail/back story. Some books have way too much stuff that I refer to as page filler or chit-chat while other stories are so severely edited that a lot of important details are omitted and it is assumed the reader will just ‘get it’. At times like that, I wonder if I’ve stepped into the middle book of a series and a lot of what I should know here was discussed in a previous book. I wonder too, if this is the result of meeting the contracted number of pages and/or word count without real thought to how it affects the storyline?
Good review. I’m glad that you were honest.
Lovely review. ^^
I have to say one of my big pet peeves is a story about something that happened between the hero and heroine in the past, and when you get into each of their POVs, they are very careful not to think about what that SOMETHING is. Now I don’t mind it for a bunch of scenes, you know to build the anticipation, but then this goes on for chapters, I really start becoming annoyed. I wanna scream, “TELL US ALREADY!!! What the h@7* happened???”
What a great review! Thanks so much for sharing!
I wonder if this would be better categorized as a book with romantic elements as opposed to a romance.