TEST
If you’ve read Lora Leigh’s books before, you know that eroticism is a major focal point, and the sexual interaction between the leads in Hidden Agendas, Kell Kreiger and Emily Stanton, plays a significant part in this novel. Both Kell and Emily’s point of view are explored in terms of what they think about the other, what they want to do with the other, and the tension of their longing builds through each interaction (if you read the author’s second book in this series, Dangerous Games, you know what I mean). When they finally get around to it, their sex is intense and graphic. And it was the only aspect of the book that I really liked. This book is not for the tame.
When Kell first met Emily, he was 18, just having become a Navy SEAL, and she was 10. As she grew older he became more and more in lust with her, and for her, he became her ultimate fantasy. After avoiding her for several years, they meet again after he and his SEAL team rescue her when she is kidnapped.
Kell is a stereotypical alpha SEAL. Physically, he sounds like the dream guy, but he wears battle scars both on the inside and the outside. The author didn’t develop his background enough for me to care about him or his past – all that comes across is that he is aggressive in bed, and arrogant and controlling out of it. This is the first shortcoming of many for me with this book. Because of the sketchy character development, I felt little sympathy for him, even though I knew he’d been through hell.
At first I really liked Emily. Her father, a former SEAL himself, raised her to be adventurous and trained her to defend herself, but now that he is a U.S. Senator, their relationship has changed. Emily’s kidnapping was engineered by one of her father’s enemies, and even after Kell and his team rescue her, she remains in danger. Her overprotective father constantly sends her bodyguards he personally handpicks in the hopes that she will fall in love with one of them, settle down and have some babies.
Emily feels controlled, that her life is no longer hers to live the way she chooses. She longs to find her freedom, and have some adventure, some excitement in her life, including the sexual kind. Her job as a schoolteacher offers her little in the way of that excitement. So she writes romance novels, and through her research for those novels and her writing, she lives vicariously. I liked this part of Emily. What I didn’t like was that the author couldn’t make up her mind about the kind of woman she wanted Emily to be – strong, assertive, and independent, or directed and controlled. As a character Emily flip-flopped so often my head spun from all her internal contradictions. One minute I cheered her on…the next minute I rolled my eyes.
Although Kell is new new bodyguard, nobody is allowed to know. The two pretend to be lovers, and the moment they are alone together, the dance begins. He makes it clear he intends to get her in bed, and she makes it clear that it won’t happen, despite every screaming nerve in her body demanding his touch. Kell believes Emily isn’t the kind of woman he could fall in love with, though as he taunts and teases her sexually, he realizes that she could create such feelings of intensity that would forever bind him to her. He determines not to let that happen. As for Emily, she already loved Kell, but thought he was the kind of man she could never have. And when they first come together, the intensity of their passion convinces her all the more that in letting herself go with him, she will be ceding control to him. She determines not to let that happen.
This type of conflict can work really well, but here it is quickly and summarily resolved when mere pages after enduring this torment, the two end up in bed and have mad, passionate sex – and continue to do so throughout the book. So much for their earlier fears, which the author spent so much time to set up.
For all of their hot, intense sex, they don’t have much of a relationship outside of the bedroom. Because I felt no sense of depth to their feelings for each other, I was never convinced they were actually in love.
As for the story outside the “romance”, meant to add suspense and adventure, it was not well developed. What plot there is concerns the drug lord responsible for kidnapping Emily in the first place. He remains a threat to her, but other than his brief appearance at the start of the story, he isn’t really a part of the book until near the end. Even worse, the book really falters by this point – I found it confusing and boring, and if not for the fact that I was reviewing it, I would have skipped the ending entirely.
There are many secondary characters, some of whom were introduced earlier in the series, but the author spends little time re-introducing them to a new reader. This may be fine for the initiated, but if you are new to the series, you’ll have a lot of unanswered questions regarding the SEAL captured and held hostage by the villain. Because this is a series, the author needed to spend some time creating dimension to such characters so that we will care about them when their own books are published. She did not.
There is an interesting twist in the end, but frankly, it came a little too late, and concerns a character I barely got to know, or care too much for. In the end, the sex scenes were hot. Had Hidden Agendas been billed as pure erotica, with everything else taken out of it, I’d have known what to expect and would have enjoyed it more. But there is supposed to be an actual plot outside the bedroom, and the author spent too little time developing it. I will not be rushing to get the next book in this series.
Grade: C+
Book Type: Erotic Romance
Sensuality: Burning
Review Date: 18/07/07
Publication Date: 2007
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.