After eighteen months in a secret prison in Southeast Asia, Dante Johnson wants only to move on with his life – until a bomb attack makes it clear that someone, somewhere won’t let the past go. All signs point to Catalina Dion, the brilliant foreign agent he once believed himself in love with…the same woman suspected of selling him out…Cat knows her young son’s safety depends on her ability to remain hidden. But now Dante has tracked her down, reigniting the searing attraction between them and tempting Cat to lower her guard in potentially lethal ways. She can’t escape him. She can’t resist him. And now, together, they’re on the trail of a rogue Russian scientist, risking everything on a fragile trust and a fierce hunger that may be more dangerous than any enemy they’ve ever faced…
This is the book that provoked this post. A flashback can be appropriate at certain times, but this book felt like one big flashback.
Dante Johnson has been in a Thai prison for eighteen months before he’s finally rescued. Having been thought dead, Dante thought that no one would ever come for him. During the time he spent in prison, all he thought about was getting revenge on the woman that put him there. Catalina Dion was the woman he loved; that was before she betrayed him and put him in a hell worse than anything he could have ever imagined. When he’s told that Cat is dead, he doesn’t believe it.
Cat Dion has no idea that Dante is alive. All she wants to do is keep her anonymity and take care of her young son as best she can. Cat knows that if her enemies catch up to her, she’ll be as good as dead. When it seems like that’s about to happen, Cat decides to make a run for it…taking her baby with her. When she learns that it is Dante that is tracking her, she is instantly furious that the man she loved left her to think he was dead.
In present time, Cat and Dante don’t meet until after page 200. Both of them have no idea that Dante is being manipulated by Victor Zwkosky, the man that blames both Dante and Cat for the death of his young wife and son so many years before. Victor has waited years to find Cat and Dante is the one that’s going to lead him right to her.
While a back story was somewhat needed, there were too many flashbacks for me. I understood that Cat and Dante were in love and both betrayed. They both went through their own horrific experiences. Dante has no idea what Cat went through and Cat thought Dante was dead. So their reunion definitely isn’t anything to write home about.
After all the build-up of the Victor’s evil ways, I found the ending to be anti-climactic. 250 pages of build-up was resolved in less than three pages. The way Victor was brought down was laughably easy. While I thought the plot was good, the execution of it was not to my taste.
3 out of 5.
This book is available from Zebra Books. You can buy it here or here in e-format.