Lisa Marie Rice

Ex-SEAL, John Huntington is looking for new office space when he meets property owner and interior designer Suzanne Barron. John is immediately overcome with fierce desire for the elegant woman and determined he will make her his.

This was painful to read. It's only really romantic suspense if you squint - it's mainly erotica. I'm not even sure where to begin with all the things that bothered me about this book. I like alpha males but this was too aggressive - borderline rapey. It's not like show more Suzanne seems to like him or want him or is willing to stand up for herself - or even talk. She's basically a non-entity waiting for him to do whatever he wants. It was awkward and wrong.

John says: I'm a gentleman.
What he actually does: But I'm not going to take no for an answer, crowd your space and take over every inch of your life whether you like it or not.
Suzanne's really not that much better. She's supposedly self-assured and confident but she spends all her time freaking out and being overwhelmed by everything he does - and frankly not in a good way. It's not like she's overcome with lust - it's like she's terrified.

I liked the Men of Midnight series. The first two books; Jacko and Metal were alpha males - but they weren't aggressively ignorant of their females thoughts and feelings. John just doesn't seem to care if it's what he wants. There's lots of talk about how he shouldn't and wouldn't hurt her but no actual proof.

The suspense plot was farfetched and very lightly used. And what the hell was with Todd's murder - John just doesn't even tell her? It's her friend for fks sake?! Plus how the hell is she supposed to remember everything or anything of importance if he doesn't tell her something that's relevant to the situation. I mean for godsakes her and Todd are working together on one job - with one client - who is also murdered. It's not fkn rocket science.

“As long as it takes,” he answered bluntly. He debated, briefly, telling her about Todd Armstrong, then decided against it. She had a right to know, and she’d be angry later. But now it was his call and he decided not to overwhelm her. He needed her to think straight and she wasn’t going to do that knowing a friend was dead, because of her. “We’re going to have to figure out what’s going on, honey. As long as we’re in the dark, we’re vulnerable. I need to ask you some questions.”

Rice, Lisa Marie. Midnight Man (Midnight series Book 1) (pp. 163-164). Jasmine Jade. Kindle Edition.

Plus is there any point not telling her when at the start they made her look at the dead freaking body with his sliced throat to ID him? Made no sense. But I could roll with the light suspense if the romance was decent - but it's not. I mean this beauty.

He made sure the women he had realized he had a strong sex drive and that they were going to be used hard. If that’s what they wanted, fine. If not, there were plenty of other women around.

Rice, Lisa Marie. Midnight Man (Midnight series Book 1) (p. 159). Jasmine Jade. Kindle Edition.

Used hard? Charming. Apart from that winner, in all of the sex scenes - he knows he's hurting her but can't control himself enough to stop himself? Seriously? All that talk about control and SEALS and he can't stop? It's so much worse than him hurting her by accident. He is actually aware that he's hurting her but does it anyway. And it's not like she's there saying hey it's okay I like it or I want it - she does not - he just can't help himself. This just perpetuates the idea that rapists are not guilty of their own actions and that's a load of crap.

All men and women are responsible for their actions. Sexual assault is not okay. Rape is not okay. Hurting someone because you can't control yourself - is not okay.

1 star. show less

I was rather surprised to discover that it’s been close to nine years since I read Dangerous Lover, the first book of Lisa Marie Rice’s Dangerous series. As such, I don’t recall a whole lot about the story, even though I tried to refresh my memory by re-reading my review of that book before starting Dangerous Secrets. To be honest, though, I’m not quite certain why these books are considered a series, as there don’t seem to be any real connections between them, at least not that I show more could discern. Either that, or the connections are so minimal that they don’t stand out. In fact, they take place on opposite ends of the country with the first book being set in Washington and the second in Vermont. In any case, these are stand-alone books that IMHO, definitely don’t require the reader to have read the previous book to have an understanding of either the characters or the story.

Nick grew up in a series of orphanages and foster homes in which he was cruelly treated, so he learned early how to be tough. As an adult, he went into the Army and eventually advanced to Delta Force, but after being wounded in the line of duty, he left the military to work for the Department of Homeland Security on a special task force that is currently surveilling a known Russian mobster with terrorist ties. Vassily is also a famous writer who is using that persona as his cover in the sleepy little town where he now lives and runs his illegal operation. Nick goes undercover to get close to the local librarian who happens to be a good friend to Vassily, hoping to learn more about him, but in the process, he ends up getting a lot closer to her than he’d intended.

Fans of dominant alpha males will probably like Nick a lot more than I did. I didn’t exactly dislike him, but he does have a more demanding, autocratic personality that isn’t entirely my cup of tea. I like my heroes to be gentler and exhibit more vulnerabilities, while Nick is essentially the proverbial island unto himself. I thought he was underdeveloped as a character as well. There were so many things about his past that if brought out more would have made him a much more interesting, vibrant, and relatable character, but what I described above is pretty much all we get. I would have liked to have know more about his difficult childhood and how that played into the man that he is today. Also, in his introspection, he goes on ad nauseum for several chapters about his most recent undercover job that he undertook right before this one, in which he had to “service” the sister of a Mexican gangster. The woman was into some hardcore BDSM that he hated participating in, but other than saying how detestable it was to him, we don’t get any sense of how that might have affected him from a mental or emotional standpoint. I just felt like there were many missed opportunities like this to deepen his character development.

Charity had some difficulties growing up as well. She lost her parents to a fire, and during that same tragedy, her father threw her from a balcony in a attempt to save her life. He was successful, but she spent months in the hospital and afterward recovering from her injuries. Then when she was about to go off to Europe to study, her elderly aunt was diagnosed with dementia, and since she and her uncle had raised Charity, she gave up her trip to stay and take care of them. Now she splits her time between looking after them and being the only librarian in her little town. Being a lover of literature, she easily befriended Vassily when he came to town and views him as a kindly father-figure. But little does she know that he is obsessed with her, thinking that she is the reincarnation of his long-dead true love. When Nick shows up, Charity believes he is who he says he is, a wealthy businessman doing research on investments in the area. She’s instantly attracted to him and doesn’t date much, so when he asks her out, she accepts without hesitation.

Charity is the type of heroine I should relate to with her love of books and her ladylike demeanor, but there were still a lot of things about her I didn’t entirely get. Much like with Nick, I would have liked to see her past explored more as well. All of the things that happened to her barely get a mention and I never got much sense of how they affect her now or shaped her into the person she is. Then there’s her instant knowledge that she’s going to sleep with Nick on their first date even though that wasn’t her usual MO. I just didn’t see what was so dynamic about him that she couldn’t resist and was even encouraging him toward that end. Also she falls in love and is willing to marry him within a week’s time, which really stretched the bounds of credibility for me. Finally I felt that she was a little too docile, always melting into submission and being completely accepting of whatever Nick told her to do. The only time she really defies him is when she insists on using her connection to Vassily to get into his secret meeting. So ultimately there were some things I liked about Charity, but other times I had a hard time respecting her choices and felt like she was a little too meek and compliant.

Despite my feeling that the characters and their relationship were sorely underdeveloped, I might have still been able to give the book a slightly higher rating, except that things really started breaking down for me in the author’s writing style. Normally I’m a fan of rich introspection and descriptive prose, but here it’s way overdone, IMHO. There are times that the author interrupts dialogue and/or building tension (whether it be of the sexual variety or suspense) to engage in page upon page of prose, telling what the POV character is thinking. Most of these sections could have been pared down considerably and not lost any crucial information, and it also would have left more room for exploring the character’s backstories and building a more dynamic emotional connection between the hero and heroine, as well as between them and the reader. There was just so much of it that left me asking, “Why do we need to know this? Show me something more interesting. Or just get back to the storytelling.” There were also a number of things that cropped up that had me raising a brow in skepticism. Eg. Charity starts having frequent bouts of nausea, and when she and Nick realize it’s only coming in the mornings, their first reaction is that she’s pregnant even though it had only been about a week since they’d had unprotected sex. Of course a two-minute research session of my own confirmed that it’s highly unlikely that a woman would experience morning sickness that soon. I probably should have started making note of the other instances so that I could give more examples, but trust me when I say that there were a bunch of little eyebrow raisers just like this peppered throughout the book. One or two I can forgive, but when there are as many as I found, it starts to erode the overall credibility of the story. I also have to admit that most of the major plot points I saw coming from a mile away. There really wasn’t much anything that happened that I didn’t expect. Lastly, for being categorized by most book sites as erotic romance, there isn’t much erotic about it beside a little graphic language. I’ve read mainstream romances that aren’t classified as erotic that are far more sensual and sexy.

Overall, Dangerous Secrets wasn’t a bad story per se (I’ve read more frustrating ones), but it was only OK for me. I would have liked it a whole lot more if the author had paid more attention to the important details, instead of engaging in endless over-explaining of nearly everything. I strongly dislike it when an author feels the need to hold the reader’s hand rather than trusting them to read between the lines. I would have liked to see better emotional development for her main characters, a stronger more organic development to Nick and Charity’s relationship so that it didn’t feel so forced, and a suspense element that really kept me on the edge of my seat and guessing what would happen next rather than one that was kind of ho-hum. With this being the second book by Lisa Marie Rice that hasn’t really wowed me, I’m not sure where I’ll go from here with her books. I still have several on my TBR pile and I know that many other readers love her, but I’m starting to think that her writing may not be for me. All I can say at this point is, we’ll see.

Note: This book is classified by some as erotic romance, and the love scenes do contain some frank language that could be offensive to some readers. But overall, the content of those scenes is more on par with steamy mainstream romance. show less

It's really 4.5 Stars...

Chloe Mason doesn’t remember much from her childhood. What she does remember she would definitely rather forget. From the frequent hospital trips to the distant adopted parents, she didn’t have the happiest of childhoods. When she finds out she has a brother, she immediately sets out to find him, desperate to know if she has the chance of adding some good memories to the crappy ones that she wishes that she could forget. When she walks into the offices of RBK, she show more hopes to find a brother to share her life with. What she doesn’t expect is to find a man that sets her heart racing.

Mike Keillor is a big man whore. Treating women like a disposable commodity, he gets a massive wake-up call when it turns out that his latest bar-room pick up is a coke-head who wants him to beat her up during sex. Looking upon the families that his partners have started to build, he suddenly realises that the days of empty sex should really be in his past. When Chloe Mason walks into his office, he feels a pull towards her that he can’t ignore. The damaged and fragile beauty (yes, I said damaged and fragile...did you expect anything else?) brings out all his protective instincts.

But the course of true love never does run smooth in these books and this one is no exception (although it was so left field it took me by surprise). First off Harry is none too pleased that man-whore Mike is sniffing around his recently-returned-from-the-dead little sister. Harry knows what Mike is like with women and doesn’t want him anywhere near her. This was unsurprising (I wouldn’t have let him near mine without a full health check and six months of proven celibacy just to make sure) and the inevitable happens when Harry makes Mike promise not to defile his little sister. Then there is the little situation of Chloe angering a Russian people-trafficking pimp when she talks to a few of his prostitutes at the shelter she works at. That was bonkers! So then we are left wondering whether or not Mike will be able to protect Chloe without breaking his vow to her big brother? And will she even want him now she knows of his man whore status?

I like Lisa Marie Rice novels. Yes, they have a formula (Tortured Alpha man meets and protects fragile heroine from impending doom and they have lots of filthy sex) but I like the formula. Let me start by saying that you need to read books one and two first. You need Harry’s back story as it explains a lot of Harry’s behaviour, including why he accepts her into his family so darned quickly. You also need to meet the other characters as they feature heavily in this book. Again, I like this as I love returning to previous characters to see how they are getting on.

Mike is a fantastic character. He truly doesn’t believe is ever going to get a HEA until he meets Chloe and then he accepts Harry’s demands so quickly because he doesn’t think he’s good enough for her anyway. I loved him because he wanted to change, because he wanted something more. He was also a big Alpha man which is always a pleasure. After he agrees to Harry’s demands, there is a six-month time lapse and I struggled with this. A lot seemed to go on during this time but the details are only mentioned in passing conversations. I thought this was a big loss to the overall story as we never saw the building of the friendship that led to the forging of an actual relationship rather than just sex. We also never saw whether or not Mike struggled with his complete character change as it was already well established by the time we got back to the couple.

Chloe was a nice enough character. I liked the way she dealt with Mike and his many (many) emotional problems. The female characters in this series seem to become more likeable and independent once their story has been told; maybe this is why I didn’t mind the other characters cropping up as much as they did! The sexy scenes were very very yummy, although there weren’t as many as I would expect in a Lisa Marie Rice book. Mike is a well experienced lover but Chloe was not. This led to some fabulous Mike moments *swoon*

The Russian side-plot was bonkers but enjoyable. However, I do think we spent a little bit too much time with him and his distasteful ways (although it did make all the men even more angry about him and then they all got more swoon-worthy :D) It was there to serve a purpose but it did get too much air-time when we could have had more Mike and Chloe time.

A very enjoyable addition to the series. With sex, romance and Russian mobsters, I think this one has a little something for everyone. Mike is full of so much self-hatred, I just wanted to give him a hug but I’ll settle for reading his journey to a HEA instead show less

I liked the first half of this story - it gave a good little mystery; an alpha male, John, with an interesting background; and Suzanne, our h, maintained her head in a crisis so that boded well for the rest of the story. There was some repetition, but this was easily overlooking in the excitement of a few dead bodies.

Then came the interminable internal thoughts, the loooooong love-making sessions, more internal thoughts, and many many repeated actions and thoughts. Goodbye momentum and my show more interest... I turned the audiobook to 'fast' and 'speed'-listened to the rest of the story :(

Audiobook, narrated by Alexandra Josephs.
3 stars.
John's characterisation is a bit quiet, but overall it was easy to listen to. I noticed that Josephs actually has a slight lisp, which I found interesting given the audio industry (radio, TV etc) used to avoid like crazy a couple of decades ago. It did not detract from the narration. show less