Most Wanted (Harlequin Superromance No 1219: Deep In the Heart)

Rating:
Summary: a letdown
Review: I looked forward to this book quite a bit after the The Healer and A Real Hero, but it was disappointing. The hunt for the deranged serial killer and all the minutiae of police procedures took up most of the book. It is pretty obvious who the villain is early on, and your initial guess will be right, but confusing irrelevant details seemed to drag the story down. Also,there was sex here, yes, but in my opinion very little romance. Interactions between Jesse and Delilah were mainly based on guilt, lust, and anger. The story featured few glimpses of their "off-the-job" lives. I liked the last couple of chapters and the epilogue, but found very little to enjoy before that. Are Superromances just going downhill?

Rating:
Summary: An excellent romantic suspense
Review: I love this book! Brashear brings out the conflicts and complications between the hero and heroine to perfection. Jesse is an amazingly attractive hero--at once strong as steel and yet utterly sensitive, sharply intelligent and yet misguided in certain of his deepest convictions. Delilah is wonderful, too, with her strength and intelligence so similar to Jesse's and her true heart and spirit that help him learn to love and let go of guilt. Brashear's gorgeous, lyrical writing is as at home in this weighty, fast-paced thriller as it is in her more heartwarming contemporary romances. Brashear is a wonderful writer, and reading "Most Wanted," I found myself pulled between wanting to read ahead in order to know what happens next and wanting to read slowly in order to savor the individual sentences and images. I can't wait for the next Deep In The Heart!

Rating:
Summary: strong character-driven police procedural romance
Review: In Austin, FBI Hostage Negotiator Jesse Montalvo tries to keep fifteen year old Delilah Butler and her mother from becoming victims during a hostage standoff. Only his voice keeps the teen from cracking. However, the local SWAT Commander refuses to wait and storms the facility. Delilah survives but her mother dies. Jesse slinks out of town feeling like a failure while Delilah knows the Voice of her hero who saved her life.

Twelve years later, the Violent Crimes Task Force requests Jesse lead a team trying to stop a serial killer who abducts young women. Delilah, now a detective, is on the team. As they work together both feel a bit shy to discuss what happened that connected them a dozen years ago as he feels guilt and she feels hero worship. Soon their divergent feelings converge into love, but the killer has Delilah in his eyesight but this time Jesse plans to not fail her.

Though exciting and well written, the police procedural subplot takes a back seat to the "Deep in the Heart" love story between two people connected by a tragic event in which they interpret the outcome quite differently. The story line is fast-paced as the duo struggle to stop the serial killer with Delilah becoming the bait over the objection of Jesse. Fans will appreciate this wonderful romance in which the hero has many doubts including does she love the statue on the pedestal hero she has painted of him or the bleeding hurting real flesh?

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: A new fan of Jean Brashear...
Review: Somehow, with all the reading I do, this is the first work I have found by Jean Brashear. I enjoyed this book, though I thought it was too obvious who the bad guy was but of course this is primarily a romance, not a mystery. Also, I wish this book had been at least a hundred or so pages longer. I really liked the characters and wanted to spend more time with them and get to know them better! I enjoyed this introduction to the MacAllister/Montalvo clan and I will be looking for the other books in this series.