Rowena’s review of For Your Arms Only by Caroline Linden.
Hero: Alexander Hayes
Heroine: Cressida Turner
He’d never been shot by a woman . . . He was once a distinguished army officer, a man of honor and heroism. But that was before Alexander Hayes was wrongly accused of treason. Forced to abandon everything he held dear, Alec became a spy for England in an attempt to clear his name. His latest commission sounds simple: locate a retired soldier gone missing. But it also sends him back home, to a family who’d thought him dead for five years—and a woman who’d like to shoot him. Everything Cressida Turner’s ever heard about Alec tells her that he’s a traitor of the worst kind, and yet this enigmatic, infuriating, and utterly captivating man may be the only person she can trust—and the only one who can find her missing father. With nowhere else to turn, she reluctantly joins forces with Alec, unprepared for both the dangerous secrets that threaten them and the relentless passion that drives them into each other’s arms.
This is the first book by Caroline Linden that I’ve read and I don’t think it’ll be the last. While this book definitely kept my attention, I can’t say that I was completely blown away either. I say that this book didn’t blow me away because the story was slow to pick up. It started out slow and the story unraveled bit by bit and I spent the first part of the book waiting for something to jump out at me. Waiting for something to make me anxious to keep reading and while I kept reading, I wasn’t anxious.
The book wasn’t a bad book, it actually ended up being good. The way that Linden brought the hero and the heroine together was cute. She’s poor, he was accused of being a traitor and he was sent back home (the one place he didn’t want to go back to until he could clear his name) to help find Cressida’s father. Watching them grow closer as they searched for clues that will bring them closer to finding Cressida’s father took some time since like I said, things progressed really slow for me in this book. More than once, I thought, Damn hurry up already! But I’m glad that I stuck it out with this book because it was good to see these two get their happy ending.
Alec was a good hero. He was one of those heroes that you immediately like even though you don’t know why. He was good at what he did and the way that he fought his attraction to Miss Turner as he called Cressida, I thought he was a hottie for real. He’s actually what sold me on this book or actually, what kept me invested in this book. I wanted to find out who set him up, what happened with the whole traitor thing and watching him struggle to put his life back together now that he was at home was enough to keep me interested in this one.
Cressida at first got on my nerves. It really had nothing to do with her but with the situation that she was in. Hello, nobody has come forth to help you find your father and now a Knight in Shining Armor comes up to take your cause and you’re questioning him? Hello? Listen to your sister and get on with the getting on. Let Alec do what he was sent to do and help him out when you can and then things will start making sense as far as your Dad is concerned. But even though I was annoyed with all of that, she didn’t get on my nerves nearly as much as I thought she would. Having to shoulder all of the stress on her own, for the most part couldn’t have been easy so I cut her a break. She ended up being a likable person and I’m glad she ended up with Alec. They complimented each other. And plus, she pulled a gun on him when they first met and I thought that was pretty awesome.
As a whole, the story behind Cressida’s father’s disappearance and then Alec’s whole “traitor” ordeal made for an interesting read. It was slow to pick up and when it finally started getting interesting, the book was almost done. Although, I did end up enjoying the book, I have a feeling this is going to be one of those books that I forget everything about come a few months from now. The secondary characters didn’t jump out at me the way that they usually do with other books but still, it wasn’t a bad book.
Grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here.
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