Nina Bruhns
Author of Shoot to Thrill
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Nina Bruhns also writes as Nikita Black.
Series
Works by Nina Bruhns
Save Me, Santa 4 copies
Dangerous Curves - a short-length contemporary hot romantic suspense novella (2015) 4 copies, 2 reviews
Silhouette Intimate Moments 14 Random Books by various authors — Author — 1 copy
Dangerous Curves 1 copy
Kiss of a Lifetime 1 copy
Barely Dangerous 1 copy
Must Love Santa - the Steamy Version: A Short, Steamy Holiday Romantic Suspense Novella (2014) 1 copy, 1 review
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Bruhns, Nina
Black, Nikita - Gender
- female
- Short biography
- Nina Bruhns was born in Canada, but grew up in California, USA. With Danish ancestry, she credits her only Hungarian gypsy great-grandfather for her great love of adventure. She has lived and traveled all over the world, including a six-year stint in Sweden. She has two graduate degrees in archeology with a specialty in Egyptology, and she has been on scientific expeditions from California to Spain to Egypt and Sudan. She speaks four languages and writes a mean hieroglyphic!
But her first love has always been writing. For her, writing for Silhouette Books is the ultimate adventure! Drawing on her many experiences gives her stories a colorful dimension and allows her to create settings and characters out of the ordinary. She also wrote erotic romances as Nikita Black. She has won numerous awards for her previous titles, including a prestigious National Readers’ Choice Award, two Daphne DuMaurier Awards of Excellence for Overall Best Romantic Suspense of the year, five Dorothy Parker Awards and two Golden Hearts Awards, among many others. She currently resides in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband and three children. She loves to hear from her readers, and can be reached at P.O. Box 2216, Summerville, SC 29484-2216. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Canada
- Places of residence
- Canada
California, USA
Charleston, South Carolina, USA - Disambiguation notice
- Nina Bruhns also writes as Nikita Black.
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Cat Me If You Can
4 Stars
Insurance investigator, Kit Colfax is on the trail of jewel thief Remy Beaulieux when she inadvertently arrests his cousin, Simon “Beau” Beaulieux who just happens to be the Sheriff of a small Louisiana parish. Determined to get to the bottom of his cousin’s case and protect his family name, Beau convinces Kit that they should work together, but she is wary of controlling and manipulative men and has no intention of losing her head over one.
An engaging romance show more with a touch of mystery.
Kit and Beau’s repartee is witty and amusing, and their chemistry is off the charts. That said, Kit’s insecurities with regard to men are overdone, especially considering that Beau is nothing like her former boyfriend.
Beau is a typical alpha male with a gorgeous Southern drawl to boot. He is reminiscent of the hero in my favorite Karen Robards book, Ghost Moon, so it was easy for him to worm his way into my heart.
The minor suspense plot could have been better developed, but the climax and resolution are exciting.
All in all, not at all bad for a debut book and I look forward to reading the sequel. show less
4 Stars
Insurance investigator, Kit Colfax is on the trail of jewel thief Remy Beaulieux when she inadvertently arrests his cousin, Simon “Beau” Beaulieux who just happens to be the Sheriff of a small Louisiana parish. Determined to get to the bottom of his cousin’s case and protect his family name, Beau convinces Kit that they should work together, but she is wary of controlling and manipulative men and has no intention of losing her head over one.
An engaging romance show more with a touch of mystery.
Kit and Beau’s repartee is witty and amusing, and their chemistry is off the charts. That said, Kit’s insecurities with regard to men are overdone, especially considering that Beau is nothing like her former boyfriend.
Beau is a typical alpha male with a gorgeous Southern drawl to boot. He is reminiscent of the hero in my favorite Karen Robards book, Ghost Moon, so it was easy for him to worm his way into my heart.
The minor suspense plot could have been better developed, but the climax and resolution are exciting.
All in all, not at all bad for a debut book and I look forward to reading the sequel. show less
This is one for the ‘Made Me Mad’ stack.
It is possibly the most implausible book I’ve ever read. It’s beyond ridiculous, and has a stupid, inconsistent heroine to boot.
I thought I would like this book. I’ve read the third one and liked it. I spent much of the time I was reading this book trying to convince myself I liked it, because I didn’t want to go below three stars with my rating. But it’s not the crazy story that earned it one star; it’s the fact this book made me show more furious. Over and over again.
I started this series out of order, which I learnt was a bad idea. You could try to read these as standalone novels, but they work a whole lot better when read as a trilogy. Some romantic suspense is emotional, moving, true to life, somehow relevant to us. Then there’s romantic suspense like this, which is like watching an over the top action movie and there solely for entertainment. You MUST suspend your disbelief, and you might enjoy it. I’ll read the others, but the cheesy cover should have warned me what I was in for.
So here, in dot points, is why this book earned one and only one star:
• The book got off to a terrible start.
Here’s how it played out:
The hero (Kick, yes, Kick) goes to a speed dating party for hospital staff, pretending to be his doctor friend. He goes with the intention of picking up a medically-trained woman so he can sleep with her, stay at her apartment for a few days, and have assistance going through withdrawal from drugs.
The hero ends up taking the woman/heroine (Lorraine/Rainie) back to her apartment by force – at gunpoint. He then kisses her even though she doesn’t want it, demands she get on the bed – while still pointing the gun at her – and produces a set of handcuffs. THEN he becomes furious with her for thinking he might want to hurt her!
Then they proceed to have sex for a number of hours.
• Rainie is then captured by ‘the good guys’ and forced to go on a major international, anti-terrorism mission with Kick. Why? Because they need a nurse to help Kick. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t one of the many multi-national organisations be able to provide a doctor or nurse who not only understood the situation, but also knew about weapons and terrorists and all the important stuff?! Preferably a man, so they didn’t have to spend the entire book worrying about Rainie being raped in the conservative, Islamic countries they visited? On top of that, are Special Forces and Black Ops men not trained in enough medical stuff to help Kick with his high blood pressure for Heaven’s sake?!
• In the first few chapters I thought it was going to be the hero I hated. Turned out it was the heroine. There are two kinds of heroine I can’t stand. Gun-toting She-Men, and innocent little idiots who becoming self-righteous little misses when the hero has to use violence to save them. This heroine had the worst of both worlds, morphing backwards and forwards between the two terrible types.
The book was very uneven in the characterisation of the women. Rainie in particular was all over the place. At the beginning she’s so traumatised by her parents’ murder in a carjacking that she can’t even get in a moving vehicle. She hates guns so much that even though she knows the hero spends time in the Middle East she’s shocked he might actually kill someone with all of those weapons he has.
Here’s a timeline of her stupidity:
#1 Having hours of sex with the man who’s holding her at gunpoint.
#2 Rainie knows Kick is a former military man who now works in the Middle East and North Africa, stopping terrorists. So what does she do when the terrorists show up at a village they are trying to trade with, and said terrorists start shooting the villagers? Well, of course she becomes furious with Kick for helping the villagers – stopping them being shot, and saving a young girl from being raped. HOW DARE HE fight the terrorists?! HOW DARE HE???!!! Because terrorists are people too, and deserving of her endless compassion. Path-Et-Ic.
#3 Kick tells the Sudanese villagers Rainie is his wife, to prevent her being raped or treated like a whore. Naturally, she becomes angry at him for doing that.
#4 Rainie suddenly decides she isn’t scared of moving vehicles anymore. A couple of days after having major panic attacks in a car, she decides that while the hero is sleeping she’ll drive the truck they stole through the desert for hours. And she does.
#5 They are attacked by more terrorists, and Rainie stabs one of them to death with a knife. She who hates violence, cars, guns, knives, men who aren’t doctors. So is she traumatised by killing someone for the first time? Nope, of course not. Are you crazy?! She’s OVERJOYED. Why? Because apparently committing her first kill has cured her of the trauma she’s been carrying around since she was a kid. Now that she’s killed a man she rides a camel with incredible expertise – while whistling the Lawrence of Arabia theme and grinning the whole time – and is no longer frightened of anything. This made me feel sick. Have an anxiety disorder? Murder someone and you'll be cured!!
#6 They reach the terrorist training camp (Al Qaeda by a different name). They’re there so Kick can assassinate an Osama Bin Laden wannabe. BUT! Rainie sees them praying and decides it’s wrong to kill such devout, principled men. Oh please.
#7 Don’t worry though. A few hours later the heroine is charging into the camp, guns blazing. SHE calls in an air strike. She who doesn’t even really know what an air strike is, let alone know the military lingo they use. She’s become She-Man. Or He-Ra. Or something. Remember, It’s only been a few days since she was a timid little idiot who hadn’t been ten blocks from her workplace in years (because she couldn’t get in a car). Now she’s Rainie-Ra, international terrorism fighter extraordinaire. That’s too much suspension of disbelief even for me – the reader who loves some crazy stuff.
• So, all of that leads me to the question; why in the hell was it left up to a couple of men to set up and complete such a major international anti-terrorist operation? How was it possible Rainie just ‘had to’ be there with them, and continue with them? Why was it a highly-trained, unbelievably experienced military/CIA operative was dividing the workload with a silly little self-righteous nurse from Manhattan? I’m sorry, but it was so implausible. I really, really tried to suspend my disbelief. I couldn’t. It was too much.
• One week after Miss Panic Attack couldn’t even get in a taxi in Manhattan, she has this to say about flying on an aeroplane from Egypt to the USA:
“Actually, I enjoyed it. Seeing all those clouds below was unreal. And the little fields and houses and cars. An amazing sight.”
• Using CAPITALISED terms such as “STORM” twelve times on one page is just plain annoying.
• I have read Gregg and Gina’s story in the third book, so it was good to see their side story here. But I’m glad I knew a bit more about Gina already, as she doesn’t come across as a very appealing character in this one.
• I can’t stand books that introduce characters with, “Merv was five-two and three hundred pounds, had dark brown hair to his shoulders and fluorescent pink eyes.” But I also can’t stand books that don’t give us any details until we’re in the middle of the story. We aren’t told the heroine’s hair colour until page 109, which was about a hundred pages too late for me. The woman on the awful, tacky cover has brown hair, and coupled with nothing in the text to go by, I got over a hundred pages in and then had to completely change my idea of how she looked. I hate that.
• In one chapter, Gina brags about her FBI ex-fiancé. A few chapters later, she wonders how Gregg knows her ex-fiancé is in the FBI. Gee Gina…I wonder how… Through the whole book she congratulates herself on being such a smart woman, but she does very little to demonstrate that.
• It was working its way towards a 2 or 2.5 star, but then the author pulled the ultimate ‘piss me off’ card and turned her French character into the Devil Incarnate. He’s only in the book for two appearances of about four seconds each. The first time he proves the hero’s superiority by not stealing the heroine’s affections. The second time he arrives at the terrorist camp just long enough to be EEEEEVIL EUROTRASH (the author’s word, not mine).
I'm surprised she didn't give him a beret and a moustache. I certainly lost a lot of respect for the author then.
I am so bloody sick of English-speaking authors demonising French characters. You know what? Of all the countries I’ve spent time in, the French are the nicest!!!!
These days you know to assume that the second a French character walks onto the page the author’s going to make him turn on his friends. Gee, what a surprise! Grrr. I saw it coming from a mile off. Even if it wasn’t a pet peeve of mine, it’s been done to death. How about negatively stereotyping another nation for once?!
On the plus side, at least there weren’t any blonde jokes in this one. Then I would really be mad.
• There was far too much time spent talking about, riding, thinking about and trading for camels. Far too much.
• The book ends with a “Buy my next book!!!!” cliffhanger to end them all. I didn’t appreciate that.
So, even if you personally loved this book, surely you can see why I didn’t. show less
It is possibly the most implausible book I’ve ever read. It’s beyond ridiculous, and has a stupid, inconsistent heroine to boot.
I thought I would like this book. I’ve read the third one and liked it. I spent much of the time I was reading this book trying to convince myself I liked it, because I didn’t want to go below three stars with my rating. But it’s not the crazy story that earned it one star; it’s the fact this book made me show more furious. Over and over again.
I started this series out of order, which I learnt was a bad idea. You could try to read these as standalone novels, but they work a whole lot better when read as a trilogy. Some romantic suspense is emotional, moving, true to life, somehow relevant to us. Then there’s romantic suspense like this, which is like watching an over the top action movie and there solely for entertainment. You MUST suspend your disbelief, and you might enjoy it. I’ll read the others, but the cheesy cover should have warned me what I was in for.
So here, in dot points, is why this book earned one and only one star:
• The book got off to a terrible start.
Here’s how it played out:
The hero (Kick, yes, Kick) goes to a speed dating party for hospital staff, pretending to be his doctor friend. He goes with the intention of picking up a medically-trained woman so he can sleep with her, stay at her apartment for a few days, and have assistance going through withdrawal from drugs.
The hero ends up taking the woman/heroine (Lorraine/Rainie) back to her apartment by force – at gunpoint. He then kisses her even though she doesn’t want it, demands she get on the bed – while still pointing the gun at her – and produces a set of handcuffs. THEN he becomes furious with her for thinking he might want to hurt her!
Then they proceed to have sex for a number of hours.
• Rainie is then captured by ‘the good guys’ and forced to go on a major international, anti-terrorism mission with Kick. Why? Because they need a nurse to help Kick. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t one of the many multi-national organisations be able to provide a doctor or nurse who not only understood the situation, but also knew about weapons and terrorists and all the important stuff?! Preferably a man, so they didn’t have to spend the entire book worrying about Rainie being raped in the conservative, Islamic countries they visited? On top of that, are Special Forces and Black Ops men not trained in enough medical stuff to help Kick with his high blood pressure for Heaven’s sake?!
• In the first few chapters I thought it was going to be the hero I hated. Turned out it was the heroine. There are two kinds of heroine I can’t stand. Gun-toting She-Men, and innocent little idiots who becoming self-righteous little misses when the hero has to use violence to save them. This heroine had the worst of both worlds, morphing backwards and forwards between the two terrible types.
The book was very uneven in the characterisation of the women. Rainie in particular was all over the place. At the beginning she’s so traumatised by her parents’ murder in a carjacking that she can’t even get in a moving vehicle. She hates guns so much that even though she knows the hero spends time in the Middle East she’s shocked he might actually kill someone with all of those weapons he has.
Here’s a timeline of her stupidity:
#1 Having hours of sex with the man who’s holding her at gunpoint.
#2 Rainie knows Kick is a former military man who now works in the Middle East and North Africa, stopping terrorists. So what does she do when the terrorists show up at a village they are trying to trade with, and said terrorists start shooting the villagers? Well, of course she becomes furious with Kick for helping the villagers – stopping them being shot, and saving a young girl from being raped. HOW DARE HE fight the terrorists?! HOW DARE HE???!!! Because terrorists are people too, and deserving of her endless compassion. Path-Et-Ic.
#3 Kick tells the Sudanese villagers Rainie is his wife, to prevent her being raped or treated like a whore. Naturally, she becomes angry at him for doing that.
#4 Rainie suddenly decides she isn’t scared of moving vehicles anymore. A couple of days after having major panic attacks in a car, she decides that while the hero is sleeping she’ll drive the truck they stole through the desert for hours. And she does.
#5 They are attacked by more terrorists, and Rainie stabs one of them to death with a knife. She who hates violence, cars, guns, knives, men who aren’t doctors. So is she traumatised by killing someone for the first time? Nope, of course not. Are you crazy?! She’s OVERJOYED. Why? Because apparently committing her first kill has cured her of the trauma she’s been carrying around since she was a kid. Now that she’s killed a man she rides a camel with incredible expertise – while whistling the Lawrence of Arabia theme and grinning the whole time – and is no longer frightened of anything. This made me feel sick. Have an anxiety disorder? Murder someone and you'll be cured!!
#6 They reach the terrorist training camp (Al Qaeda by a different name). They’re there so Kick can assassinate an Osama Bin Laden wannabe. BUT! Rainie sees them praying and decides it’s wrong to kill such devout, principled men. Oh please.
#7 Don’t worry though. A few hours later the heroine is charging into the camp, guns blazing. SHE calls in an air strike. She who doesn’t even really know what an air strike is, let alone know the military lingo they use. She’s become She-Man. Or He-Ra. Or something. Remember, It’s only been a few days since she was a timid little idiot who hadn’t been ten blocks from her workplace in years (because she couldn’t get in a car). Now she’s Rainie-Ra, international terrorism fighter extraordinaire. That’s too much suspension of disbelief even for me – the reader who loves some crazy stuff.
• So, all of that leads me to the question; why in the hell was it left up to a couple of men to set up and complete such a major international anti-terrorist operation? How was it possible Rainie just ‘had to’ be there with them, and continue with them? Why was it a highly-trained, unbelievably experienced military/CIA operative was dividing the workload with a silly little self-righteous nurse from Manhattan? I’m sorry, but it was so implausible. I really, really tried to suspend my disbelief. I couldn’t. It was too much.
• One week after Miss Panic Attack couldn’t even get in a taxi in Manhattan, she has this to say about flying on an aeroplane from Egypt to the USA:
“Actually, I enjoyed it. Seeing all those clouds below was unreal. And the little fields and houses and cars. An amazing sight.”
• Using CAPITALISED terms such as “STORM” twelve times on one page is just plain annoying.
• I have read Gregg and Gina’s story in the third book, so it was good to see their side story here. But I’m glad I knew a bit more about Gina already, as she doesn’t come across as a very appealing character in this one.
• I can’t stand books that introduce characters with, “Merv was five-two and three hundred pounds, had dark brown hair to his shoulders and fluorescent pink eyes.” But I also can’t stand books that don’t give us any details until we’re in the middle of the story. We aren’t told the heroine’s hair colour until page 109, which was about a hundred pages too late for me. The woman on the awful, tacky cover has brown hair, and coupled with nothing in the text to go by, I got over a hundred pages in and then had to completely change my idea of how she looked. I hate that.
• In one chapter, Gina brags about her FBI ex-fiancé. A few chapters later, she wonders how Gregg knows her ex-fiancé is in the FBI. Gee Gina…I wonder how… Through the whole book she congratulates herself on being such a smart woman, but she does very little to demonstrate that.
• It was working its way towards a 2 or 2.5 star, but then the author pulled the ultimate ‘piss me off’ card and turned her French character into the Devil Incarnate. He’s only in the book for two appearances of about four seconds each. The first time he proves the hero’s superiority by not stealing the heroine’s affections. The second time he arrives at the terrorist camp just long enough to be EEEEEVIL EUROTRASH (the author’s word, not mine).
I'm surprised she didn't give him a beret and a moustache. I certainly lost a lot of respect for the author then.
I am so bloody sick of English-speaking authors demonising French characters. You know what? Of all the countries I’ve spent time in, the French are the nicest!!!!
These days you know to assume that the second a French character walks onto the page the author’s going to make him turn on his friends. Gee, what a surprise! Grrr. I saw it coming from a mile off. Even if it wasn’t a pet peeve of mine, it’s been done to death. How about negatively stereotyping another nation for once?!
On the plus side, at least there weren’t any blonde jokes in this one. Then I would really be mad.
• There was far too much time spent talking about, riding, thinking about and trading for camels. Far too much.
• The book ends with a “Buy my next book!!!!” cliffhanger to end them all. I didn’t appreciate that.
So, even if you personally loved this book, surely you can see why I didn’t. show less
If you’re running a competition to find the most embarrassing book cover ever, look no further. Here’s your winner. The designer obviously worked on the theory women only like pink and biceps. My problem is that pink is a little on the embarrassing side, and biceps have their uses, but put together on a cover = a book you can never let anybody see you with.
I liked the conclusion to the ‘Passion For Danger’ trilogy, but if you haven’t read the earlier books you’re not going to show more appreciate it anywhere near as much. Yet again the hero and heroine take a definite backseat to EVERYONE else. Though Gregg and Gina’s story has been running through the whole trilogy, and so I felt a little more connected to them than the stars of the last book, their story wasn’t given justice in this one. One minute Gregg is a crazy, dangerous agent guy who may or may not have sold Gina to terrorists and who can only get turned on when he’s tied Gina to the bed. The next he’s telling some story about childhood trauma, being tied to the bed himself, and getting mushy at a wedding and proposing with a whole lot of purple prose. It’s hard to believe in such an extreme character transformation when it happens off the page.
The premise is interesting; Gina was kidnapped by terrorists in the first book, tortured and forced to work for them in the second, and here at the beginning of the third is just recovering after her rescue. Gregg was the man who took her to the place where she was abducted from, so when the book begins she believes that not only is he a traitor, but that he’s coming back for her. Of course, Gregg isn’t the bad guy here.
What we got of the relationship was good. Gregg is an interesting hero (and blonde! – I’m so sick of people who’ll only read about heroes who are carbon copies of each other, but who are fine with women being eight feet tall, 600 pounds, with multi-coloured hair and a pet pig), and there was a lot of potential there. It’s only a pity the author forgot he was the hero, and gave more page time to Alex (also blonde!). Same goes for Gina. There was so much potential for a heroine who is recovering from a terrible ordeal while believing the man she’s in love with in working with terrorists. But Rebel stole her book from her.
Yet again I liked the characters – the eighty-six thousand and two characters – and their stories. But I didn’t like them all in the same book. Rebel and Alex’s relationship took over the book, which would have almost been fine if Rebel wasn’t a prim and proper ‘Southern Belle’ little…FBI agent…who spent more time nagging all the men about bad language than actually doing any work. Speaking of the bad language, the woman’s offended by words I didn’t even know could be offensive. There were times she was nagging someone about swearing where I had to go back and read the dialogue a number of times because there wasn’t a swear word anywhere to be seen.
Marc – hero of the last book – obviously wasn’t a favourite of the author’s, as I think he might have had about a paragraph of page time and maybe two words to say in the whole book. Maybe if the author hadn’t given the female characters so many Too Stupid To Live moments there might have been more time for Marc to flex those superhero muscles. TSTL in order to move the plot along is always annoying. Rebel being on the phone, gossiping with her friend through the terrorist attack at the beginning and the assassination attempt at the end was stupid. There are moments for the characters to deal with friendships and relationships, and then there are moments where they should be doing their job!
There was so much happening that when we got to the best part of the story it was dealt with too quickly. By then we’d spent so much time with so many people that there wasn’t page space to make the action at the end very exciting. When that was over and done with we got a few pages of super-gooey, lovey-dovey stuff with a wedding, a baby and a proposal. I don’t think that in a series about Islamic extremists, CIA agents and torture we need to be handed the standard, old-fashioned ‘your life’s not complete until you’ve had the white wedding and popped out the kiddies’ ending. That’s what the category romances are for. Don’t make something edgy and then borrow the Virgin Princess and the Billionaire Tycoon’s epilogue. It's wrong.
This series had so much potential, but became swamped in too many characters and too many side stories that none of them were given justice. I would have liked for there to have been six books instead of three so that we could actually get to know these people and care about their relationships. There were certainly enough couples to fill out a longer series. It also would have been nice if the books were a little more self-contained; none of them stand up on their own, and so you have to read them in quick succession to have any hope of understanding them.
There’s a lot of good here, but the Passion For Danger series is not my favourite romantic suspense by a long shot. show less
I liked the conclusion to the ‘Passion For Danger’ trilogy, but if you haven’t read the earlier books you’re not going to show more appreciate it anywhere near as much. Yet again the hero and heroine take a definite backseat to EVERYONE else. Though Gregg and Gina’s story has been running through the whole trilogy, and so I felt a little more connected to them than the stars of the last book, their story wasn’t given justice in this one. One minute Gregg is a crazy, dangerous agent guy who may or may not have sold Gina to terrorists and who can only get turned on when he’s tied Gina to the bed. The next he’s telling some story about childhood trauma, being tied to the bed himself, and getting mushy at a wedding and proposing with a whole lot of purple prose. It’s hard to believe in such an extreme character transformation when it happens off the page.
The premise is interesting; Gina was kidnapped by terrorists in the first book, tortured and forced to work for them in the second, and here at the beginning of the third is just recovering after her rescue. Gregg was the man who took her to the place where she was abducted from, so when the book begins she believes that not only is he a traitor, but that he’s coming back for her. Of course, Gregg isn’t the bad guy here.
What we got of the relationship was good. Gregg is an interesting hero (and blonde! – I’m so sick of people who’ll only read about heroes who are carbon copies of each other, but who are fine with women being eight feet tall, 600 pounds, with multi-coloured hair and a pet pig), and there was a lot of potential there. It’s only a pity the author forgot he was the hero, and gave more page time to Alex (also blonde!). Same goes for Gina. There was so much potential for a heroine who is recovering from a terrible ordeal while believing the man she’s in love with in working with terrorists. But Rebel stole her book from her.
Yet again I liked the characters – the eighty-six thousand and two characters – and their stories. But I didn’t like them all in the same book. Rebel and Alex’s relationship took over the book, which would have almost been fine if Rebel wasn’t a prim and proper ‘Southern Belle’ little…FBI agent…who spent more time nagging all the men about bad language than actually doing any work. Speaking of the bad language, the woman’s offended by words I didn’t even know could be offensive. There were times she was nagging someone about swearing where I had to go back and read the dialogue a number of times because there wasn’t a swear word anywhere to be seen.
Marc – hero of the last book – obviously wasn’t a favourite of the author’s, as I think he might have had about a paragraph of page time and maybe two words to say in the whole book. Maybe if the author hadn’t given the female characters so many Too Stupid To Live moments there might have been more time for Marc to flex those superhero muscles. TSTL in order to move the plot along is always annoying. Rebel being on the phone, gossiping with her friend through the terrorist attack at the beginning and the assassination attempt at the end was stupid. There are moments for the characters to deal with friendships and relationships, and then there are moments where they should be doing their job!
There was so much happening that when we got to the best part of the story it was dealt with too quickly. By then we’d spent so much time with so many people that there wasn’t page space to make the action at the end very exciting. When that was over and done with we got a few pages of super-gooey, lovey-dovey stuff with a wedding, a baby and a proposal. I don’t think that in a series about Islamic extremists, CIA agents and torture we need to be handed the standard, old-fashioned ‘your life’s not complete until you’ve had the white wedding and popped out the kiddies’ ending. That’s what the category romances are for. Don’t make something edgy and then borrow the Virgin Princess and the Billionaire Tycoon’s epilogue. It's wrong.
This series had so much potential, but became swamped in too many characters and too many side stories that none of them were given justice. I would have liked for there to have been six books instead of three so that we could actually get to know these people and care about their relationships. There were certainly enough couples to fill out a longer series. It also would have been nice if the books were a little more self-contained; none of them stand up on their own, and so you have to read them in quick succession to have any hope of understanding them.
There’s a lot of good here, but the Passion For Danger series is not my favourite romantic suspense by a long shot. show less
Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales
Quick & Dirty: Major Kip Llowell is on a secret mission when his cover is blown. With the Aid of DeAnne Lovejoy they may just make it out of China alive, but will there relationship survive both of their pasts?
Opening Sentence: It would be a woman.
The Review:
This was a good book. I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not because I do not read military style books usually, not even romances. I am glad I read this one though. Major Kip Llowell is on a secret show more mission on the Hainan Island in China when his cover is blown. While trying to figure out how he is going to get out of China without getting arrested for being a spy he runs into DeAnne Lovejoy. DeAnne is an officer of the U.S. Department of State and as such is sworn to help American citizens stuck in bad situations in foreign countries. Right away sparks start flying between these to, but unfortunately they both have things they must deal with from their pasts before a relationship would work. Their immediate need is to get out of China alive and without getting arrested.
I really liked both Kip and DeAnne but I did think their relationship developed really fast. I guess though in life or death situations you appreciate that you have to enjoy what you have while you have it. I really loved watching DeAnne grow as a character. As I was reading the story DeAnne starts out as a woman who thinks all Marine men are the same and will only use and hurt you before they leave you. Because of this she refuses to touch a gun and only fights with words. As she gets drawn deeper into Kip’s world she realizes not all Marines are the same and starts to loosen up. On top of all that she is so brave. She and Kip are stranded on an island where people want to capture and hurt them and instead of breaking down and losing it, she is strong and brave even when she is terrified, which is the definition of being brave. I liked Kip but I didn’t think he really changed much. He did decide that he would do anything to be with DeAnne even if it meant facing his family and his past.
One of the things I liked about this book was that there were actually two romances discussed in the story, not just one. The first and main romance is of course Kip and DeAnne’s romance. The second romance is between STORM members Darcy Zimmerman and Bobby Lee Quinn. This couple also had problems but not as many. Actually the problems were mostly one sided. Bobby Lee Quinn or Quinn to his friends would marry Darcy whenever she was ready if only she would let go of her fears. An orphan who was given up by her foster family once they had their own children feels that if she marries Quinn he will one day replace her with “a newer model”. They are sweet together and you can tell from the way they interact that they are madly in love with each other.
I really loved this story. Nina Bruhns has a way with drawing the reader right into the story. I read this book in two days. I just wanted to get to the end and make sure everyone got out ok and see what happened with our two couples. The only problem I had with this book was the cliffhanger at the end. I hate finishing a book and not knowing exactly how everything is going to go. Now I have to find the next book that tells me what happens. I recommend this book to those who like a good romantic suspense story.
Notable Scene:
He strode to the shattered back window, lit a match, aimed and tossed it into the vehicle, and gave the SUV a solid push when he saw where the match had landed. The SUV started rolling toward the edge of the cliff.
DeAnne’s jaw dropped in astonishment and she jumped back. “What on earth are you doing?”
He gave it another two-handed shove so it gained momentum. “Killing myself.”
FTC Advisory: Berkley/Penguin provided me with a copy of Blue Forever. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. show less
Quick & Dirty: Major Kip Llowell is on a secret mission when his cover is blown. With the Aid of DeAnne Lovejoy they may just make it out of China alive, but will there relationship survive both of their pasts?
Opening Sentence: It would be a woman.
The Review:
This was a good book. I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not because I do not read military style books usually, not even romances. I am glad I read this one though. Major Kip Llowell is on a secret show more mission on the Hainan Island in China when his cover is blown. While trying to figure out how he is going to get out of China without getting arrested for being a spy he runs into DeAnne Lovejoy. DeAnne is an officer of the U.S. Department of State and as such is sworn to help American citizens stuck in bad situations in foreign countries. Right away sparks start flying between these to, but unfortunately they both have things they must deal with from their pasts before a relationship would work. Their immediate need is to get out of China alive and without getting arrested.
I really liked both Kip and DeAnne but I did think their relationship developed really fast. I guess though in life or death situations you appreciate that you have to enjoy what you have while you have it. I really loved watching DeAnne grow as a character. As I was reading the story DeAnne starts out as a woman who thinks all Marine men are the same and will only use and hurt you before they leave you. Because of this she refuses to touch a gun and only fights with words. As she gets drawn deeper into Kip’s world she realizes not all Marines are the same and starts to loosen up. On top of all that she is so brave. She and Kip are stranded on an island where people want to capture and hurt them and instead of breaking down and losing it, she is strong and brave even when she is terrified, which is the definition of being brave. I liked Kip but I didn’t think he really changed much. He did decide that he would do anything to be with DeAnne even if it meant facing his family and his past.
One of the things I liked about this book was that there were actually two romances discussed in the story, not just one. The first and main romance is of course Kip and DeAnne’s romance. The second romance is between STORM members Darcy Zimmerman and Bobby Lee Quinn. This couple also had problems but not as many. Actually the problems were mostly one sided. Bobby Lee Quinn or Quinn to his friends would marry Darcy whenever she was ready if only she would let go of her fears. An orphan who was given up by her foster family once they had their own children feels that if she marries Quinn he will one day replace her with “a newer model”. They are sweet together and you can tell from the way they interact that they are madly in love with each other.
I really loved this story. Nina Bruhns has a way with drawing the reader right into the story. I read this book in two days. I just wanted to get to the end and make sure everyone got out ok and see what happened with our two couples. The only problem I had with this book was the cliffhanger at the end. I hate finishing a book and not knowing exactly how everything is going to go. Now I have to find the next book that tells me what happens. I recommend this book to those who like a good romantic suspense story.
Notable Scene:
He strode to the shattered back window, lit a match, aimed and tossed it into the vehicle, and gave the SUV a solid push when he saw where the match had landed. The SUV started rolling toward the edge of the cliff.
DeAnne’s jaw dropped in astonishment and she jumped back. “What on earth are you doing?”
He gave it another two-handed shove so it gained momentum. “Killing myself.”
FTC Advisory: Berkley/Penguin provided me with a copy of Blue Forever. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. show less
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 52
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 1,461
- Popularity
- #17,583
- Rating
- 3.4
- Reviews
- 65
- ISBNs
- 92
- Languages
- 2
- Favorited
- 1