Danger­ous Lover by Lisa Marie Rice is a roman­tic sus­pense novel, copy­right 2007 and pub­lished by Avon Red. It’s a trade paper­back novel with 352 pages. Lisa Marie Rice is a pop­u­lar author at Ellora’s Cave. How­ever, I’ve never read her but I was curi­ous to know if her voice/style would suit me. I’m a fan of roman­tic sus­pense when it’s smartly writ­ten. The cover of this book promised to be sexy and steamy so I bought a copy from Fic­tion­wise and pre­pared myself for good steamy roman­tic sus­pense story.

Dangerous Lover by Lisa Marie RiceThe author gives a glimpse of the life our hero, Jack Pre­ston, had before being adopted by a Colonel and serv­ing in the military. It’s at a  home­less shel­ter that Jack first meets Car­o­line Lake and she leaves a last­ing impres­sion on him. Their worlds col­lide briefly but they are socially worlds apart. Caroline Lake comes from a upper class fam­ily. Jack is home­less and the son of a mean drunk.  Jack escapes out of poverty to be the adopted son of a Colonel. Shortly thereafter, he becomes a sol­dier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack man­ages to turn his life around and becomes wealthy. After sell­ing his father’s secu­rity firm and tying up what­ever loose ends he had left in Africa, Jack flies all the way back to Sum­merville in search of Car­o­line. The author reminds us in thought and deed how Jack has lusted after Car­o­line. For twelve long years Jack has lusted after her. So, you can imag­ine the reunion. The love scenes are pretty hot. There’s no teas­ing with the “wait, let’s think this through” or “stop, I’m not ready yet” speeches. Shortly after Jack meets Car­o­line, they are lovers.

Caroline’s life held promise until tragedy struck. We learn that Car­o­line has suf­fered loss and is strug­gling under a bur­den of debt. The only thing left of value that she kept was her inher­i­tance, a man­sion that she opens up for board­ers. Car­o­line hasn’t had the best of luck with men. Most men dumped her for her penny-pinching ways or found that they were com­pletely put off with her car­ing for her sickly brother, Toby, before he died. For six years Car­o­line has strug­gled to sur­vive but never mov­ing for­ward with her life. That is until Jack comes along.

Mean­while, in Africa, a loose end is com­ing for Jack. It seems that $20 mil­lion dol­lars worth of blood dia­monds has dis­ap­peared with a cer­tain some­body who left to start his life over again. This part of the story was graph­i­cally vio­lent. It seems that the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army have bar­baric ways in how they treat their slaves in the dia­mond market.  Of two things that I was cer­tain: the vil­lain would find Jack and some­body was gonna get hurt or killed when they met up with him, too.

I had a vague inter­est in the plot. I liked the dif­fer­ent set­tings and such but didn’t much care for the grue­some vio­lence.  I liked the idea of two wounded souls find­ing solace in each other but unfor­tu­nately, it was pre­dictable and bor­ing. I skimmed a few of the love scenes as they are numer­ous and didn’t add much in the way of plot or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment to me.  Also, I liked Jack but I didn’t feel that he really loved Car­o­line. He lusted after her for so long that the story failed to con­vince me that his feel­ings tran­si­tioned from lust to love. Car­o­line while vul­ner­a­ble dis­played some moments of strength just by surviving. The author really made her a sad and pathetic figure. Despite my lack­lus­ter response to this book, it is get­ting some good reviews. I per­son­ally thought that Ms. Rice voice/style didn’t suit me. Her nar­ra­tive  voice was rather choppy. In the end Dan­ger­ous Lover was OK but noth­ing great. Her debut rated a C for me but I am will­ing to give her next book a look.  

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