DANGEROUS DESIRES

Author: Dee Davis ISBN: 9780446542043 7/2010 SUSPENSE Publisher: GRAND CENTRAL

A RACE FOR SURVIVAL Stranded in the Colombian jungle after a mission goes bad, Drake has only one objective: evade the mercenaries hot on his trail and deliver "the package" to U.S. officials. But "the package" has a mind of her own, and she has no intention of trading one set of captors for another. Madeline Reynard is beautiful, headstrong, and hell-bent on escape after years as a crime lord's pawn. She'll risk everything for freedom, even if it means deceiving the dark, handsome operative who now holds her life in his hands. Drake has been burned too many times to let a woman manipulate him, especially a secretive one like Madeline. Even so, they cannot deny the attraction between them. Now as enemy forces close in, Drake and Madeline must trust each other with their lives-or face certain death.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

You know those horror movies that has someone doing something stupid while you scream "Look out! The killer is out there!" at your television screen? Or when someone you know does something really stupid, and you want to head slap them so maybe, just maybe, some sense will be knocked into them? Well folks, this is the book version of those moments. I was constantly frustrated throughout DANGEROUS DESIRES, thanks to the heroine.  I believe that this heroine is who Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin were talking about when they said "survival of the fittest". This has to be one of the dumbest heroines I've ever read about.

Madeline runs away from the hero when there are killers after her, and she has no weapons and gets attacked. Later on she decides to go shopping without taking someone with her, and big surprise, she gets attacked. Then she decides to go shopping AGAIN! What do you think happened? That's right. She gets attacked. This woman had no survival instinct, and if it was any other character, she'd be dead. Then there was the fact the romance just felt off. The hero and the heroine had virtually no trust in each other, and it seemed like the love they claimed to have for each other came out of nowhere.

Another thing that bothered me is that most of the aspects in this book were there for convince of plot, and didn't feel natural at all. There were times where the plot would call for convenient hacking access. It just didn't add up right and brought the whole feeling of the book down a couple of notches.  On the plus side, though, the action scenes in this book were the best in any of Davis' other two books in this series. At times it didn't make sense, but it had the feeling of a pure action-film movie, where it doesn't matter if the action makes sense because it's really cool.

DANGEROUS DESIRES is the second book in the series, and I don't think it's necessary to read the first book to enjoy this book. There are some recurring characters, but you'll learn enough about them that you don't feel you are missing anything. I can't say this was a good book, or even an okay book. To me, this was just unenjoyable, and not even the action scenes could save it. I really wouldn't recommend this book except to someone who really really likes the A-Tac series.

Caitlin Turner