Rowena’s review of Fast Track (Buchanan-Renard #12) by Julie Garwood.
A corrupt congressman, a mother’s secrets, and a sizzling romance ignite passion and suspense in the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood.
Cordelia Kane has always been a daddy’s girl—her father raised her alone after her mother died in a car crash when Cordelia was just two years old. So when he has a serious heart attack, Cordelia is devastated, and the emotion is only intensified by the confusion she feels when he reveals the shocking truth about her mother.
Cordelia can’t suppress her curiosity about the woman who gave birth to her, and when she discovers the answers to her questions lie in Sydney, Australia, she travels there to get them.
Hotel magnate Aiden Madison is Cordelia’s best friend’s older brother. He’s oblivious to the fact that she’s had a crush on him for years. When he gets railroaded into taking her along to Sydney on his company jet, he unknowingly puts her life at risk. He’s recently angered a powerful congressman by refusing to purchase overvalued land. Congressman Chambers is not a man to let such an offense slide, and he has the resources to get even and to get what he wants.
In Australia sparks are flying between Cordelia and Aiden, but multiple attempts on Aiden’s life are made while Cordelia is with him, and he realizes he must put a stop to the madness before he loses the thing he values most.
I’ve been waiting for this story since both Aiden and Cordie were introduced in Murder List back when I read it in 2007. It’s been so long since I’ve read Murder List that I can’t remember the details of it, not even the Cordie and Aiden details but I do know that I wanted this book years and years ago. So when I found out that this book was theirs, I jumped at the chance to review it because how could I not?
Cordie is one of Regan’s (from Murder List) best friends. One of her sisters of the heart and they’ve been friends since grade school. Cordie has had it bad for Aiden ever since she first met him and told him how to start his car…and that crush has grown over the years and is still going strong as she leaves her childhood behind and goes into adulthood. But then her father has a heart attack and doesn’t make it and before he dies, he drops a bombshell on her and tells her not to waste her life waiting on anything or anyone. Life was too short. She had to really live and Cordie takes those words of wisdom to heart. She decides it’s time to move on from Aiden because he was never going to see her as anything other than his sister’s best friend.
So Cordie starts to make some plans. She plans to move on with her life and start all over …in Boston. Away from her two best friends and away from the one man that she needs to get the hell over. She also starts to make plans about the bombshell that her father dropped on her. The mother she thought died is very much alive and just didn’t want to be her mother. Or her father’s wife. She wanted to move back home to Australia and live the life that she was meant to live before she got pregnant with Cordelia.
This story was a long time coming for me and I was so anxious to read it that I zipped right through it and I enjoyed every minute. I enjoyed the sparks between Cordie and Aiden. I adored Aiden and how he was the only person that called Cordie, Cordelia. I loved how possessive he was about her and I enjoyed seeing Cordelia put up a fight about moving on from Aiden.
I really enjoyed getting to know Cordie and Aiden more. We got to know them through bits and pieces in Murder List and then later in Fire & Ice (which I didn’t read because I didn’t know that it was Sophie’s book. Must fix that pronto!) but it was nice to finally get inside both of their heads more. To get to know them through their own thoughts. I adored both of them in the other book but I loved them in this one.
Aiden was everything that I knew he was going to be. Arrogant, bossy and all out sexy. Seeing him come to terms with the feelings he’s got for Cordie, someone who should have been like a little sister to him made for great entertainment. The possessiveness he showed toward Cordie, the jealousy that went through him with every guy that looked Cordie’s way, I loved it all.
I loved who Cordie grew up to be. She wasn’t a perfect, cookie cutter heroine who did all of the right things that thought about rainbows and unicorns all day. She was stuck in a rut of her own choosing and she made strides in turning her life around. I liked that she openly grieved for her father and outright hated her mother. I liked seeing her deal with everything that was going on in her life straight on and not hiding from them. She was strong and she was capable and completely perfect for Aiden.
Garwood did a great job of pulling my heartstrings in this book. I was right there with Cordie, crying my eyes out over her Dad. I was right there emotionally when she would put her relationship with Aiden into perspective and I was right there with her when she finally let go of all of her insecurities and just loved Aiden. I adored seeing Sophie and Regan again (and Alec too!) and I loved the way that they all loved each other. They had each other’s backs and knew each other well enough to go the extra mile for them and I loved that Alec did that for Cordie.
The suspense part of the book was the weakest part of the story, in my opinion. The whole who’s trying to kill Cordelia and why thing kind of fell on its face for me because I knew who it was and why they were doing it all along. I thought Cordie should have known all along too because it was such an easy reach. I would have liked that part of the story to have been more suspenseful but in the end, I wanted the romance anyway. And that part was great!
This book lived up to what I was hoping Aiden and Cordie’s story would be and I’m so glad that we finally got it. I’d definitely recommend this one.
Grade: 4 out of 5
This book is available from Dutton Adult. You can purchase it here or here. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.