Simon, Ryan, and Jillian were all college pals and were almost joined at the hip before it became obvious that Ryan had a “thing” for Jillian.  Simon wasn’t about to get in the way of the future of that relationship and he walked away, believing that his best friends were destined for one another.  It broke his heart to put his love for Jillian on hold, possibly forever, but that is what friendship demanded.  Not long afterward, Jillian and Ryan were married, and Simon and Ryan were on the same covert-ops team.  Simon is wracked with guilt over the fact that he promised Jillian that Ryan would come home with him and in the end, Ryan lost his life.  How can he face her now with that broken promise between them?

But what Simon doesn’t know would fill a separate book.  Jillian never told him that it was Simon who held Jillian’s heart, that she married Ryan because Simon walked away.  She never told anyone about the abuse of her marriage, of how Ryan went from a possessive lover to an abusive and angry husband, one who eventually didn’t even resemble the man who had been her best friend in college.    Now Jillian is working for the Homeland Security and has been assigned to Simon’s team and once again she has to deal with the memory of Simon walking away while having to work closely with him.

How does one find words to really explain what it is like to read a suspense-filled romance that keeps the reader on the fine edge of a razor blade?  It is a book that is filled with the tension of the evils the team is combating, it is a story that pits Simon and Jillian in close proximity and fishes up all the old passion, all the old feelings, and all the old frustrations.  These two are like two ships who keep on missing one another, who can’t seem to get past their memories of Ryan and who keep allowing his involvement in their past to pollute their possible future together.  Neither one of them has the whole story and it is only as the life-threatening danger comes to a head that they begin to unravel the mysteries of the past, the deeper truths that keep them apart needlessly.  This is a love story that is frustrating for the two lovers as well as for the reader.  Yet it fits well into the construct of a suspense tale that in and of itself is calculated to keep you riveted completely.

I have only read one other story in this series and after reading this one am tempted to go back and read the other five books.  I like the way this writer puts her stories together, how she weaves all the main and incidental characters to make a fascinating whole, how the story moves on at an inexorable pace and keeps the reader fully engaged in the story.  It’s one of the best suspense tales I have read recently and while we know there are a number of very good covert-ops based novels on the reading lists right now, this is one of the best.  If this genre is your bag, you’re going to really like this one.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.