Review: Waking Nightmare by Kylie Brant.

Publisher: Berkley, PenguinGenres: Romantic Suspense

Rowena‘s review of Waking Nightmare by Kylie Brant.

Hero: Detective Ryne Robel
Heroine: Dr. Abbie Phillips
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

With a serial rapist loose on the streets of Savannah, hotshot detective Ryne Robel needs answers, not the psycho-babble head games of forensic profile Abbie Phillips. Abbie must convince him that head games are exactly what this elusive suspect is all about.

I was itching for a good romantic suspense since I haven’t read one in quite a long time. I’m seriously happy that I picked this one up. From the first page to the last page, I was captivated by the story. I have never read anything by Kylie Brant before but I am definitely mighty intrigued to read more. Kylie Brant brought a very dark and sordid tale of a serial rapist that I could not put down. From the moment I opened this book to the time that I closed it, I wanted to know more. I wanted to know more about the characters, about the case and I wanted to know who.

This is the first romantic suspense book that I’ve read in quite a long time that had me so absorbed in what I was reading that everything else failed to make it to my radar. I mean, even when I was reading Hot Pursuit, I found myself putting the book down to do something else. That wasn’t the case with this book. Every minute that I wasn’t at work or doing my Mommy duties, I was reading this book. My daughter understood that when I went into my room and opened up this book, I was not to be bothered. So to say that I enjoyed this book is putting it mildy but as much as I enjoyed this book there were quite a few things that bothered me.

Two things mainly. First was the way the hero, Ryne Robel bulldozed his way into finding out what he wanted to know from Abbie (the heroine) and this his refusal to do the same. The way that he just forced his way into her thoughts and into making her tell him what he wanted rubbed me the wrong way especially since he understood the whole “everyone has secrets”. The way that he forced Abbie to tell him what her secrets were and then closed up tighter than a military camp when she tried to ask him about his own secrets pissed me off. I understood why he felt he needed to know and I understood why she didn’t want to press him but it didn’t stop me from getting good and pissed.

I got over that but the second thing that pissed me off in this book was Abbie. She was extremely smart and she worked by a code of ethics that didn’t leave any room for mistakes and yet when Ryne brought her sister in for questioning because he had reason to believe that she was connected to the case, she got pissed off at him because he didn’t tell her. Yeah, I understood why she was pissed at him but even understanding why she was mad (because duh, it is her sister) didn’t negate the fact that I was royally pissed off at her because everything Ryne had told her about her sister should have been looked at and evaluated by Abbie but because of their close relationship, Abbie overlooked that because of the familial bond. At the time in the book, I was royally pissed off but as the book wore even that didn’t dampen my enjoyment of the book.

I really enjoyed unravelling the mystery in this book because for the life of me, I could not figure out who the hell the rapist was. This book had me trying to remember little minute details about every single person and eliminating them as possible suspects. It’s funny because I can’t remember getting this into a book so that has to account to Mrs. Brant’s creative way of weaving this story.

This story is about a serial rapist who is targeting women who have had traumatic experiences in their lifes that have caused them to be deathly afraid of different things. He uses these severes against each of his victims and really screws with their heads. The lead detective on this case, Ryne Robel must find this bastard before he strikes again but he needs more help and the help he receives is Abbie Phillips, a team member of the Mindhunters. The Mindhunters is a special task force that goes in and help investigate different cases for different police forces across the country. They’re led by Adam Raiker, who is a legend as a profiler and knows what he’s about. You know, we didn’t find out too much about the Mindhunters organization and it would have been nice to find out what they were about, how they were formed but the only thing that we know about these Mindhunters was who the big boss is and that Abbie was apart of the team. I wonder if we’ll find out more as the series progresses. Right now, I’m not seeing a bigger story being told as the series continues but I’m anxious to read the other books to see for myself if there’s going to be a bigger story told. It would be nice to get to know Adam more and I sincerely hope that I’ll be able to see Ryne and Abbie again in future books.

This book was a great read and I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to read about a great mystery with a steamy romance thrown in as well. The romance between Ryne and Abbie was hot and totally believable and added to my enjoyment of the overall story. I enjoyed this book quite a bit and am looking forward to reading more by Kylie Brant.

Kudos to Mrs. Brant on a penning a thrilling story!

This book is available from Berkley Sensation. You can buy it here.

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