tina

THEY'RE BACK! And better than before!

Revisado: 03-24-24

Kate's older, wiser, and much less annoying in what seems like a new launch of the series. with this double installment much more character development, the return of interesting friends, and some promising new ones as they solve a prehistoric puzzle.
i took a many yr hiatus from this serial, and coming back to it for the last 3 books, have to say i was thrilled at where it ended, here.
Cannot wait for next book!

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Young Adult Angst

Revisado: 08-27-20

I love most everything done by this writing duo, but couldn't make it thru this one. Too young adult angst-y. A couple funny parts, great secondary characters (as always in this series), but I was rolling my eyes too often. Seems forced and doesn't flow like previous books.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Powerful. prophetic, with the heros we need

Revisado: 04-30-20

There is something cathartic about this book that kept me listening nonstop today. As if by listening to an even slightly worse scenario than we are living thru with all the same social, cultural and political issues we are all wading thru every day like oppressive fog, one can experience the grief, anger and other bottled emotions at a safe distance.

Henry Parsons is the hero we all need right now, almost the humble anti hero with his philosophical struggles to do right, and in all the characters we meet thru him in this incredibly suspenseful story. And while telling a tale that so eerily presages the nightmare the world is going thru here in spring 2020, I think its the fantastic characters that kept it riveting. Characters like the unusual saudi prince/physician/soldier Majid whose resigned frustration at the politics beyond his control and musings about religion with Henry surely echo those of millions of others. The submarine crew and captain made me smile. When was the last time the Navy SEALs were in a book that featured them as a mere footnote?

This book a remarkable , moving, suspenseful listen with great depth in both medical science and geopolitical tensions that go far enough to explain without turning into a tech manual. Pacing was fast. I didn't want to miss so much as a sentence. Editing kept the story moving and all the wicked threads coming together in some suprising ways. Narration was excellent and kept me hooked on the content.
The ending was a surprise.
Tom Clancy fans will get a kick out of the book.
Best use of a credit in years.

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esto le resultó útil a 23 personas

Anderson lights a bonfire in hot new spinof series

Revisado: 04-12-19

Sometimes successful series lose their momentum as the author runs out of ideas, but Toni Anderson just picked up steam from her Cold Justice series of FBI agents and opened a new window into the nail-biting action of hostage negotiators. One of the refreshing things about her suspense novels is the research she does, the fast pacing of the mystery, the realism of the romance and the interesting characters she draws--each unique. I especially liked the heroine Ava and how Anderson resolved Ava's and Dominic's internal struggles.
Unlike so many romance writers AND romantic suspense writers, Anderson doesn't create the drama around the female doing something stupid to allow the man to be the "hero" and rescue her from her folly. Often, writers will elevate the male's "greatness" (or his "fitness") by making him rescue or save a female after she does something stupid, wanders into a situation alone and forgoes backup or other such mistakes. Anderson doesn't do that, and her heroines in the Cold Justice and this new Crossfire Series are talented, respected, kick-ass and take charge women. The guys are good partners to the women we want to be (but not necessary to save the girl from her mistakes) and salt-of-the-earth men. Its a refreshing change and will keep you up all nite unable to turn it off.
After listening to some really poorly narrated audiobooks lately, I have a renewed appreciation for the talents of Eric G Dove's narration here. He keeps the characters separate, does a reasonable job with accents, but does a believable male and female voice so that you can just relax into the story immediately, understand who is speaking instead of constantly being aware of the narrator and focusing on mispronunciations, weird pauses, stilted diction etc. Love the narration. Thanks Mr. Dove! Thanks Ms Anderson for another great read/listen that will be even better the second and third listening.

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Ten- star rollicking fun good time!

Revisado: 09-12-18

I haven't had this much fun in a romance audiobook EVER.
The story is well laid out, superbly edited, and the narration will really raise the bar for other such productions. Both narrators did really great job...actually...their PERFORMANCE was one of the best in over 1000 audiobooks of any genre. Its difficult to pull off good comic narration, but they did it so well i felt like the characters were right in front of me and i knew them.

But the best part was the witty, ribald inner dialogue that was right out of reality...get ready for realistic expletives. i bought the sequel with my last credit halfway thru!
no cliffhanger. all loose ends tied up.
Ten stars to this talented duo!

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A Plot with too many holes

Revisado: 08-25-18

Romances with hot older dudes are few and far between, especially in military romance. I couldn't wait to dig into this one. While the plot sounded intriguing, you had to decide early on whether to continue in view of the sheer implausibility (such as she sneaks out after bombing and no one notices except some unknown gov agency that taps a retired SEAL but NOT the FBI?). I stuck it out. It is unique to have older protagonists.

It was disappointing when it became a "love at first sight" thing for him falling for her pic and her falling for first sight and confessing it all immediately and then this serial bachelor is suddenly all in, and beginning and ending each sentence calling her "luv".

The writer may not have any experience with these kind of guys, which would explain how she portrays some of them. The mens' dialogue is what a woman would WANT a man to sound like. But in reality they Don't sound like that. Especially these kind of guys. There are the usual problems with strategy, tactics and practices that plague this genre sometimes, but they were minor compared to the overarching weakness in the story and the romance.

The one thing Stoker has going for her is she can tell a story, has a good sense of place, and the pacing kept it moving briskly. More research or draft readers who get the spec ops community would be beneficial.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Old Brockmann still not back yet

Revisado: 07-11-17

Brockmann's two Navy Seal series were the gold standard in romantic suspense for a long time. They still remain my favorite books in a vast audio library. But not this one which I will be returning.
Brockmann took a few years off to pursue other projects including helping her daughter's writing career in YA. She turned out a few aborted series starters in the interim--the futuristic Born to Darkness and the Troubleshooters offshoot Do or Die. Both these seemed still born and weren't continued as they fell a little flat with fans, altho I did like Born to Darkness somewhat and was waiting in vain for book 2. Having re-listened to the two SEAL series several times in the intervening years, I have been waiting for this book for a long time. Several years in fact.
But 3.5 hours in, I was done.
The action starts out fairly solid--a lukewarm chase with a lot of casual chitchat when things should have been a little more intense and not in character with a supposed SEAL. But its distracted by self-consciousness of a writer whose only frame of reference remaining creatively is her author-side. So the heroine, who is a romantic suspense author is talking with her characters in her head and this oddity continues.
This book doesn't have the focused impact of her previous suspense works altho it really had potential with the daughters framing for a theft by what appears a sociopathic high school peer. But unfortunately the deliver is choppy and disjointed. We are suddenly in his house full of old characters from the previous books in a scene that seemed suddenly there without preamble. If you haven't read the previous books its awash in a dozen new characters with idle banter and a lot of "family" stuff. I say that because it just becomes all about kids, the inner lives of tertiary character kids not involved in the plot, but kids of previous characters.
The oddest part was happening upon a scene where the old troubleshooters gang of mostly spouses are casually talking about romantic tropes of "mystery baby" that romance writers use--you know the one: girl has fling, disappears pregnant, guy finds out 1-20 years later, has to save baby/grown child... Most romance authors use it at some point. And here these characters are apropos of nothing discussing it while waiting for Peter to come home from looking for daughter. It was weird.
I love and am grateful for Suzanne Brockmann and hope she gets her mojo back. This wasn't it.

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esto le resultó útil a 17 personas

Stories about real-life hot men in NewZealand

Revisado: 09-25-15

This is shortest review I've ever written for two incredibly difficult, detailed romances for the price of one. A lot of sadness that James injects with great realism, fortitude, old fashioned "winning" the girl, but modern courtships and pain that lead to Very Teary Happy-Ever-Afters. Nate and Liam really work hard to win their burned ladies in very different and concurrent courtships. Hardcore romantics are gonna love this.

NO Need to have read previous books in series to love this book. This is my first in series, and I'm gonna buy them all. My gratitude to Rosalind James is huge.
For younger readers who "haven't been around the block", pay very close attention to the insight into male behavior which is completely on par.
CAUTION: I actually looked up the team mentioned in the book--New Zealand's All Blacks and not only do they exist, but everything the author says about the bodies in the book bear out online and will cause old-fashioned fainting spells. Hyperventilation, hot sweats and other adverse reacations may occur. Be forewarned.
-teary, but hot n' bothered
Buy this book.
tina

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Most unforgetable couple of the year

Revisado: 09-04-15

To be honest?
I wasn't looking forward to this one. I couldn't see how Nalini Singh was going to make a delicious hero out of Nasser, the strangely animalistic one of The Seven. Was he intriguing in lead up books? Oh sure. There is no end to Ms. Singh's imagination. But I wasn't seeing it--him as leading romantic male.

But then I didn't see how she was going to make the callous manipulative Dmitri a leading hero, and now he perches at the top of my best-hero-of-all-time of 700 books. And now? Nasser is up there too.
So Ms. Singh has done it again. Its really a great story, fascinating character development that builds over the course of the book, and what I really enjoyed was the determined courtship and the receptive female--none of the usual weird contrived reasons she couldn't go for him. Yet--you have to really wait for Nasser to go back in time to find the missing key to unlock his mate, so you get the delicious slow build they've both been dying for. Its really a wonderful tale.

AND amidst this fabulous romance, we get more intense plot development about the awakening archangels, and yet another white knuckle battle with the incalculably evil Li Juan. I really thought that plot line was on an ending arc, but turns out Ms. Singh's got lots in store for us, a couple new magnificent characters and some shocking new developments with Aiden and "Bluebell" Ilyum (sp?). I've been most curious to see how The Legion and the Primary would develop out, but she's keeping us dangling.

This is not a book to jump into if you are new to the series. In this fantasy/romance genre this is one of the best series out there. You will not regret starting at the beginning.

A++ for both Nalini Singh and Justine Eyre.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

Delicious Fun & Satisfying Girl Power Moments!

Revisado: 08-01-15

There were quite a few points in the first half of the book that I was really cheering Marley on and enjoyed quite a bit of satisfaction at Jake's shock at Marley's sheer competance in the field. I enjoyed that Naughton had a bit of fun at Jake's expense--a former Navy SEAL who's squeamish in the jungle, and whose own survival skills are more akin to an office mgr than a former operative ;) Oh, don't get me wrong; you never the get the feeling he's any less a hot He-Man (or "alpha" if you prefer). Its just that more often than not, old stereotypes prevail in this type of novel and its nice that Naughton had some fun and gave us some satisfying surprises. Such as when, early in the book, Marley does the Walk, announcing to Jake She's Done. She doesn't get all drama on him. She just does the walk and how often do we wish we could be as poised in our resignation or disgust with a pompous thoughtless boss?

It turns out that despite Jake's relegating Marley to office/operational support, she's quite expert in the field and doesn't make any fanfare about establishing a base camp, catching and prepping dinner with MaGyver-like aptitude in the jungle. Meanwhile our hero shows up with a palm frond after being gone for hours. His mouth agape response at sleeping and food accomodations by Ms Daniel Boone was hilarious.

The story is a another fun, seat of your pants adventure, but it really relies on too many autorial conveniences, making turns in action kind of predictable, which is why I've only offered 4 stars for overall and for the story. The chemistry and the banter between the two is top notch and very enjoyable. Very often during the middle of the book I would stop what I was doing to really concentrate on listening to the dialogue. For that reason, I'm not going to forget this book in the next couple weeks.

But I object that our saavy, sharp Marley is painted as blind to the machinations of rescued ex boyfriend. And that maybe she is purposely being blind, maybe even being so out of spite to Jake's hostility. There's a necessity in writing romance that there's got to be conflict and Jake's particular commitment and esteem issues I think would've been enough to meet the requirement without some of the ridiculousness of the character never finding her tongue to reject a marriage proposal and just weakly going along with it in the lack of so many other things.

We don't really resolve Jakes esteem issues which would have been more realistic than all the shenanigans that ensued. Those shortcomings aside, I still enjoyed the listen in spite of a tad bit of eye rolling and would recommend this to those who like the action romance genre, and especially to those frustrated girl warriors out there.

It looks like Ronan, Marley's half-brother, will get his own tale soon which will be an auto-download for me!

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas