I have loved the two thriller novels, so far, that Abrams has written about Avery Keene but this book I just couldn't get throughly into....I made it to over 100 pages but I kept waiting for the STORY to really engage rather than primarily being about the relationship between Raleigh and Adam. It just kept slowing down for more between the two of them when I wanted the pace of the subject of the novel to really engage. ( )

I was pretty excited when I came across this book on the "new" shelf at my local library. Its a romantic spy thriller (two of my favorite genres) written by an author who I've read and enjoyed before. I was sure this was going to be a fun read. Unfortunately, this really doesn't work as either a romance or a spy thriller. On the romance front, I genuinely do not understand why the female lead likes the male lead other than he's hot. And his attraction to her doesn't seem based on much more than that. And yet, we need to believe that these two are madly, deeply in love. Even the resolution, at the very very end of the book their feeling seem shallow and like they've learned absolutely nothing about communication or trust. And I could have overlooked that if the spy thriller part had been worthwhile, but honestly that might have been even worse. The whole mission seemed contrived to get the two leads in the same space rather than for any logical reason. Nothing about the terrorist plot or the revel of the who the traitor is makes any logical sense. And I'm not talking about the way a lot of thrillers don't make sense if you think too hard about them...I'm talking about literally I cannot explain to you why these allegedly professional operatives would have behaved this way. All in all, do not recommend and I won't be reading more of Abrams backlist for sure. ( )