REVIEW: Deadly Temptation by Justine Davis

Deadly Temp­ta­tion by Jus­tine Davis is a roman­tic sus­pense novel that is an early ebook release from eHar​le​quin​.com. Deadly Temp­ta­tion opens with Liana Kiley start­ing her first day at work for the renowned Red­stone Empire. The owner of the com­pany is gazil­lion­aire, Josh Red­stone, who goes by “Josh” and not “Mr. Red­stone.” The motto at the Red­stone com­pany is that every­body is to be treated like “fam­ily.” Loy­alty is also another Red­stone trade­mark, too. Turn over is low and every­body is friendly and help­ful. While set­tling into her new job as assis­tant to the depart­ment head, Liana glances at the morn­ing news­pa­per and rec­og­nizes a famil­iar face. Her frown attracts the atten­tion of her boss while he’s mak­ing his daily rounds about the company.

Josh notices that the news­pa­per arti­cle has greatly upset Liana and he imme­di­ately gives her a shoul­der to lean on and encour­ages her to spill it. It seems that a cop that Liana once knew some 8 years prior has fallen into dis­grace. Liana man­ages to per­suade her eccen­tric boss to use his élite Red­stone secu­rity team to look into the mat­ter. It doesn’t take long before one of the secu­rity advis­ers looks into the case and has already tracked down their tar­get. Only thing is that the tar­get doesn’t want to be found.

Logan Beck used to be the golden child of the police depart­ment. A ded­i­cated cop, Logan went after his dream despite the fact that he knew that it dis­ap­pointed his father. Logan rose quickly within the depart­ment going from detec­tive to nar­cotics offi­cer in three years. Logan was able to infil­trate a drug oper­a­tion that was respon­si­ble for one cop’s death. As high as he was able to climb, Logan fell far. Accused of being a dirty cop, Logan’s cover has been blown and he’s being accused of accept­ing drug money. A year’s worth of work blown and his life com­pro­mised by the depart­ment. Logan sus­pects a set-up but doesn’t seem inter­ested in prov­ing it.

As for the romance part of the story, Liana and Logan do share a brief his­tory. Both were vic­tims in a deadly bank rob­bery. Logan saved her life and nearly died in the process. While Liana was blinded by his heroic actions, the evil fiancée never vis­ited Logan when he was hos­pi­tal­ized. Alone and aban­doned, Logan still sulks about it. With the IA inves­ti­ga­tion and his own col­leagues turn­ing against him, he starts devel­op­ing a defeatist atti­tude. His only ally is Liana, who is 100% con­vinced of his inno­cence and pushes him to fight the charges. How­ever, Liana’s blind to the man that Logan is today com­pared to the hero she met 8 years ago. It’s the main con­flict in their relationship.

While this story was well writ­ten it was rid­dled with lit­tle annoy­ances. First, Liana being con­vinced that Logan was inno­cent. She only knew him briefly. They both shared an intense sit­u­a­tion that they wouldn’t soon for­get but she hadn’t seen or talked to Logan in 8 years. Sec­ond, repet­i­tive themes and phrases of “loy­alty” and “we are a family” were annoy­ing. Third, I got tired of Logan’s self-pity party. He had zero inter­est to fight the charges against him and it wasn’t until well after the ninth chap­ter that he started to show some back­bone. Before that he was hard-headed and stub­born and refused any help what­so­ever. Fourth, the con­stant reminders of Liana being this “girl next door” and being “naïve”–hey, I get it. Lastly, Logan has a cou­ple of brain farts. For instance, since Logan’s been outed, he reluc­tantly agrees to stay with Liana. Instead of let­ting the secu­rity expert (an unknown face) go into his old neigh­bor­hood to get his notes, cloth­ing and such, he wants to do it him­self (despite hav­ing a famil­iar face with a lovely bounty on his head). Unfortunately, Logan does decide to see rea­son. I was hop­ing he’d get capped cross­ing the street: end of story (my san­ity restored).

Jus­tine Davis is a favorite but this story was a huge dis­ap­point­ment. The writ­ing was fine, how­ever, it was the char­ac­ters and the plot that were the biggest prob­lems for me. Dia­logue was rather sopho­moric and stilted, too. I didn’t really care about Liana or Logan. They both seemed a well matched pair but I didn’t warm up to them. I was irked with the whole Red­stone rep­u­ta­tion and their “we are fam­ily” mantra where every­body gets along crap. How­ever, there was a glim­mer of hope that maybe this book would be sal­vage­able after all when Logan and Liana are reunited after 8 years. I was really into them rem­i­nisc­ing about the past. Their inti­macy was nice but it didn’t last long. Alas, the magic fiz­zled and it kind of went bad from there. I ended up get­ting a ten­sion headache after read­ing this book.

After swal­low­ing a cou­ple of Advil’s, I felt good enough to look up some of my keep­ers from Davis’ back­list. Jus­tine Davis wrote sev­eral books that were keep­ers for me through­out the 90’s. For some really great read­ing, I rec­om­mend you find The Skypi­rate, Lord of the Storm, A Whole Lot of Love and Stevie’s Chase just to get you started. Deadly Temp­ta­tion, while not a com­pletely ter­ri­ble read, it just doesn’t hold a can­dle to her back­list. AAR may even have some reviews up for some of those titles. Deadly Temp­ta­tion was apart of my 30% off buy­ing spree. My grade, C–. Maybe you’ll have bet­ter luck.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Jus­tine Davis, Deadly Temp­ta­tion (Sil­hou­ette Roman­tic Sus­pense), Romance