I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is book five, the final one in the Titanium Security series.
When reading a series, it’s hard to be as objective with each book in the series because no matter how hard I try not to, I’m comparing the books… I liked Rekindled better than Singed, Burned, and Extinguished but still not as much as I liked Ignited.
The gist: This is Alex’s book. Alex is the NSA guy who has been in charge of the investigation into the terror network that has been the ongoing plot of this series. He’s Claire and Zahra’s boss. Four years earlier, while working undercover in Mombasa, Alex met Grace. They had a whirlwind romance that ended abruptly and resulted in both of them having broken hearts. Now Claire works from the UN as a chemical weapons specialist. Alex spots her in Islamabad while he’s there investigating the terror network. His connection with her is brought to the attention of the bad guys and they attempt to use her as bait in order to take Alex and the Titanium team out.
I REALLY liked Grace. It’s pretty much impossible NOT to like her. Alex was alright. As a character, he was about like Sean for me – he didn’t really interest me. It WAS endearing how much he cared for Grace, though, and regretted the way they had ended things. Their romance is a second chance one and it’s sweet.
As with books two through four, the story itself is what appealed to me as opposed to the romance aspect of it. This one didn’t necessarily have my adrenaline pumping, but it was fairly intense. Quite a bit happens in it and it’s like a race against the clock in some ways.
There weren’t any discrepancies that jumped out at me in this one, so that was a plus. There was a scene in the SUV, however, that had me scratching my head. Grace and Alex are in the SUV and he’s just parked in his hotel’s parking garage. Instead of going up to his room to get it on, HE climbs over the console, reclines the passenger seat back and they dry hump and get all hot and bothered. When he pulls back because he suddenly realizes they’re in a car with a perfectly comfortable hotel room just a few floors above them, he leans up on his knees on the seat. Okay. Not only was like “Huh?” because they were groping in a car like teenagers in the parking lot of the hotel, the fact that it was in the front seat didn’t compute for me. Alex isn’t as big as Hunter and Gage, but he’s still a big man, powerfully built, yada yada. How big is this SUV??? He climbed over the console to get to her instead of pulling her to his side. Then the passenger seat must just be massive in order for him to kneel on his knees between her legs on it. And the roof must be incredibly high in order for him to kneel on his knees on the seat. CLEARLY I read too much into things like this, but it bothered me. It wasn’t a MAJOR annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
I did like the drama of the story in regards to the terrorist plot and all that. I skimmed most of the sex because the scenes literally went on for PAGES. I read on my iPhone with teeny tiny font. I’ve figured out that one page of a book spans about 2 screens on my phone. I’m not joking when I say that one sex scene was eleven screens long. Roughly five pages. For ONE SEX SCENE. Don’t get me wrong here, I like a good sex scene, but five pages for one scene is more than ‘a bit much’ for me. Then there is the equivalent of about five or six pages of story and then ANOTHER approximately five page sex scene.
I did like the resolution to the story. There was closure on all fronts of the story and each couple in the series. Overall, Rekindled was a good book and I enjoyed this whole series. Decent characters, the couples had plenty of passion, and the drama was intense and never ending. This is a good series to read if you like a romance novel with depth, intrigue, suspense or whatever. I, personally, am a fan of these kinds of romance novels.