This is the fourth book of the Alaskan Security – Rogue Team series of 7 books. I wanted so badly to love this book. I have been enjoying her characters, but the writer is bogging her readers down with the chaotic plots and storylines.
Yes, yes, yes…PTSD is real, people have hard times dealing with deep and unsettling issues. We get it. At 28% completion, Harlow has become unremittingly mean, obnoxious, bordering on cruel. She has always been snarky, actually it has been part of her charm, but now it’s dark and unnecessarily vicious. He self-importance is sky-high. She lives in her head, an unpleasant place to be. Truly, a person with walls as high as hers, with so much unresolved anger, should be left alone; of course, then we wouldn’t have much of a story. And that’s what the angst is all about: the story. It’s too much, too unreal and it feels manipulated. The puppet master/writer is behind the scenes punching all Harlow’s buttons for our amusement.
Dutch appears to be the only person who can see how close to the edge Harlow is. No one else. All of these highly trained observers of the human condition cannot see that a coworker is deep into PTSD. ALL the women at Alaskan Security have problematic, maniacal exes. And they all either hide their heads in the sand or want to eschew the help that they obviously need, offered by Alaskan Security. Harlow is no different. Same song, different page.
There are irritating errors in the book including:
“Harlow booped him on the…nose….” As in Betty Booped? Because I thought of Betty Boop, effectively removing me from the story. Perhaps she bopped him on the nose?
“Mona’s gaze dipped to Piece’s chest.” Up to now, his name was Pierce and continues to be after this typo.
In one case, even the swearing had typos; I’d just as soon not repeat them here.
Alaskan Security has been touted as tight, controlled, secured by battle-disciplined men (and now by women). As a security agency, why is it that any breach in their security (cyber or brick and mortar) leads to unmitigated chaos? How many times across how many books will they be breached? Geez Louise, I wouldn’t hire them to guard my garden.
If there had been something new to fill the first 40% (to Chapter 11) of the book, it would not have been so difficult to read. As it stands, the book became boring while iterating, and reiterating, the same sad issues over and over again. Readers are smart enough to remember when a character is in pain, and what circumstances led up to that pain. We don’t have to be reminded every few pages. We don’t have to be beaten over the head with it. It was all too much, entirely too much.
Throughout the book we can see the Dutch-Harlow dynamic being manipulated. For instance, it serves the writer’s purpose to have Dutch unable to assist Harlow with cyber tasks he used to do alone. In Counterfeit Relations, Dutch states that he knows how to hack and he successfully secured the Alaskan Security system from another hacker attempting to take over.
At 64% completion, we are (at last!) getting into the mystery behind the story. It has taken this long to get past all the troubles and torment the characters had to get themselves through…finally, we arrive at the heart of the matter. Nothing is resolved, of course, but at least we are getting into the meat of the book(s).
These books are all odd. The writer is good at creating characters to populate her novels. Her dialog is usually top notch and often fun. But the plot is being spun out in way too many directions. The reader needs a scorecard to keep up with all the activities. Is the book suspense or romance? It isn’t both. When Dutch and Harlow are romantic, the plot stagnates, and it feels as if the scenes where the two are interacting, working or sexing, are prolonged to fill the book. The plot plods along with so much anguish that it gets numbing.
While the Dutch-Harlow energy is sometimes fun, it is also consumed with pathos. Like the plot, it’s also numbing. I like both characters and would love to experience some gentle downtime just to offset all the tumult that their relationship tends to engulf. I am irritated with the writer: her characters deserve better plotlines. They deserve to be themselves, rather than to serve up a reason to push the storyline along. As I stated at the beginning, I really wanted to love this book, but I do not. It is disappointing and I hope the next book brings us closer to a conclusion.