I didn’t enjoy the heroine, and I wanted it to be over.
STORY BRIEF:
Nigel is governor of Santa Marina. He suspects bad guys may do harm to him, his daughter Daphne and her friend Carly. He hires Ford a Navy SEAL to watch over Carly, and he hires a local police chief to watch over Daphne. Carly is a photographer filming commercials on a cruise ship. The wrong model was hired, and she uses Ford as a substitute model. She doesn't know that Ford is there to watch over her. She thinks Ford is a rancher from Wyoming. Bad guys follow and shoot at Carly and Daphne. Ford is there to protect them.
REVIEWER'S OPINION
CAUTION, INCLUDES SOME SPOILERS:
This book was not "outrageous fun" as described on the cover. Nothing surprised or delighted me. I wasn't drawn to Carly and had trouble identifying with her. She lost one account doing one commercial and grieved as if her life were over. My gosh, there are other jobs out there, especially for someone as talented as she is. She also got angry too frequently and easily. Several scenes bothered me. They were too contrived and predictable to be entertaining. For example, when Carly first meets Ford, she offers him $500 for an hour's work. She says it in a way that implies she is buying sex, when in fact she needs a model for the commercial. His reaction and then her reaction creates conflict, with Carly then being angry and furiously stomping away. Another example is Carly asking him several times, who he was, why he was there, etc. Other than saying he was from Wyoming (which was true prior to joining the Navy), he just stayed silent saying nothing. Later when she guesses that he is military, she is furious saying he lied to her, and stomps away. The way I see it, he never lied, he just never told. This was conflict due to her inaccurate assumptions. I don't enjoy this type of conflict. I was also annoyed that Carly went to the kidnappers all alone with no weapons or tracking devices, thinking she could help, but all she did was get kidnapped as well. This is stupidity. Aside from Carly, I was a little confused about the bad guys. By the end of the book, I still didn't know much about what they were planning. I would have liked a few more details about that. Other parts of the story were ok. Ford was good.
DATA:
Story length: 342 pages. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: 3. Length of sex scenes: 0.4, 1.9 and 3.4 pages. Total number of sex scene pages: 5.7. Setting: current day mostly in the Caribbean, with a little in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Copyright: 2001. Genre: contemporary romance with some suspense.