Jen’s review of For Her Eyes Only (McCormack Security Agency, #3) by Shannon Curtis
Ryan Brennan has worked plenty of jobs for the McCormack Security Agency, so going undercover at a couples resort to identify a pair of killers should be easy. Except his assigned partner—uh, “wife”—is Vicky Hastings. It takes all his willpower to keep their relationship professional, even when they’re not sharing a secluded cabin.
Finally out from behind her desk, Vicky can’t wait to prove herself in the field. But with Ryan? Their office flirtation cooled when he turned her down after a scorching kiss at the office Christmas party. Working together while sharing close quarters certainly isn’t making it easy for her to stop thinking about him.
After a series of escalating “accidents,” including Vicky’s near-fatal fall from a tampered bridge, the two have to work together to wrap up this case fast, before more than hearts get broken.
Ryan Brennan is an agent at the McCormack Security Agency (MSA), a private security firm. (This is book 3 of the series centered around the Agency, but I had no problem jumping into the middle.) Vicky Hastings is the Operations Manager of the MSA, though she wants to become a field agent. Despite Ryan’s objections, she’s partnered with him to investigate her friend’s father’s murder and the subsequent near-murder of the friend herself. Ryan and Vicky end up having to go undercover at a swanky couple’s therapy retreat to try and identify the killers.
Starting with the murder that kicks off the whole plot, this book makes little sense. The murdered man is a plastic surgeon who has just done total facial reconstructions on a couple who had no deformities or other issues. There is no explanation for why such a wealthy, respected doctor would ever take on patients who CLEARLY are up to no good. And I actually wasn’t convinced the couple needed surgery in the first place. The only reason the MSA people are on to the couple is because they silenced the surgeon by killing him. If they hadn’t, they’d still be regular wanted criminals, but there wouldn’t have been any serious impediment to them going ahead with their plan! The couple was trying to hide their identities so they could go ahead with their planned crimes, but honestly some hair dye and glasses would probably have served nearly as well as total facial reconstruction. The whole premise was pretty far fetched.
It’s hard to believe anyone in this story is a professional agent. Ryan is supposedly experienced, but he refuses to discuss their cover story or get their stories straight beforehand. Uh, pretty sure knowing your cover story is like the first unit in Undercover 101. Vicky is worse. You do find out later she isn’t just an “office manager” as Ryan thinks–she does have some valuable skills and is tougher than she appeared–but nothing in the book suggested she was ready to be an agent. For example, after finding Vicky’s good friend near death and then having to run from the house to avoid being blown up by a bomb, Ryan (understandably) is a bit curt with Vicky when trying to get her to keep moving away from the burning house. Does she say “You’re right, we need to get to safety. Thanks for the reminder”? Nope. She calls him a jerk and gets huffy. Later, when they’re debriefing with the MSA crew, Vicky wondered to herself what might have led to her friend’s attack, but then she “purposely shut down that painful train of thought.” It is LITERALLY her job to figure out what happened to her friend. If she can’t even think about it, how is she going to solve the crime?!? At this point, I was rolling my eyes so hard I was getting a headache. Still, Vicky plunges on in her incompetence. She demands a gun, even though she hasn’t had much (any?) firearm training other than one session with another MSA agent and even though he jokes that she wasn’t a very good shot. She gets nauseous when she has to lie too much (and keep in mind this entire mission is undercover, so it’s one big lie). She’s horrified to learn that Ryan has had to do unsavory things while undercover, and basically makes him feel like shit for doing his job. Yeah, no you’re totally ready to be an agent!
There is little subtlety in the mystery. The team pretty much figures out who is behind the murders immediately based on fingerprints. That’s right, the mastermind criminals who are so clever that they would even change their faces are undone by some careless (and convenient) fingerprints at the crime scene. And the MSA team knows the criminals are at this couple’s retreat after Vicky’s friend scrawls one cryptic word in blood after her attack. They determined the couple’s destination by…Googling the word. The retreat was one of the results that came up, so off they go on a full scale mission with nothing more than a search engine result and a hunch. These guys are thorough detectives, I tell ya! But at least the MSA is doing something, unlike the police who seem to have no role in the book. They haven’t interviewed the friend, don’t seem to be following up on the fingerprints, make no connection with the retreat (I guess their Google-fu isn’t as advanced). This is a homicide investigation, so it’s hard to believe that the MSA would be seemingly handling it all alone.
The romance isn’t much better. Vicky has been friend-zoned before, so she thinks she’s boring to men. She’s had the hots for Ryan for a long time, but despite their chummy relationship and a passionate kiss they shared at last year’s Christmas party, he has been strictly hands off. Vicky gives Ryan the hornypants too, but he doesn’t think he’s good enough for her. His family life was completely screwed up, and he doesn’t really have other friends, so his friendship with Vicky is too important to him to mess up. Both of them spend most of the book in their own heads. She’s constantly wondering why he doesn’t like her and why he isn’t jumping her every moment; he’s constantly thinking sexy thoughts about her and then feeling like he’s a heel for wanting to bone his pal. Of course, most of this could have been solved by a simple conversation, where they each explain their true feelings and fears. In fact, they never actually discuss any of this, at least not directly. They just gloss over it all and then end up a permanent couple.
There were a few good things about the book. My favorite scene is when Vicky has to do some awesome evasive driving on a snowy mountain road. If she was as competent and confident in the rest of the book as she was then, this would have been a different story. The couple’s retreat premise was interesting, too. They were forced to do therapy, for instance, and it was a chance for them to have some veiled conversations about their actual relationship while still inside their married-couple story. Unfortunately, those discussions never went very far. I love the trope of couples having to pretend to be married since it creates great sexual tension, but then it felt like they held off on the sex for too long. Their drama kept going on and on, and they kept not talking and not talking. Eventually I got kind of tired of it, and there was no real chance to grow after their physical intimacy because the story was over.
I appreciated what this book was trying to do, but the inconsistencies and frustrating characters were just too distracting for me.
Grade: 2 out of 5
The Series:
This book is available from Carina Press. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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