TEST
The Woman Left Behind is the best kind of romantic suspense in the sense that the heroine is no damsel in distress requiring rescue but neither is she a beefed up black-ops assassin as are found in so many female-empowered stories of this genre. Instead she’s somewhere in between; she’s basically tech support. Communications. But after scoring high on a spatial awareness test disguised as a video game, she and a few others from her department are reassigned to various GO-Teams to undertake surveillance and communications work on-site. As in boots on the ground, in hostile environments – oh, and jumping out of planes as required.
Jina Modell is hugely unimpressed with her risky new assignment but she is no quitter. She might be the only woman in her group of recruits, and is easily the smallest of the bunch, but when she’s introduced to the handful of hulking, dangerous men who are to be her new team members, she doesn’t flinch. She gives as good as she gets. Over the course of a year she transforms physically under a barrage of training exercises, embracing her new normal, adjusting to her team, and never giving in. But the hardest part of her new assignment aren’t the physical challenges, isn’t the toll to her body, the lack of sleep and total erasure of her social life, no. It’s resisting her attraction to her team leader, Levi “Ace” Butcher.
Levi never dreamed he’d end up saddled with a barely trained member on his team, and he certainly didn’t expect it to be a woman to boot. Jina is no bombshell but the moment she opens her mouth and lets loose her attitude, all wrapped up in a raspy, throaty, voice… he’s gone on her. Too bad he’s already laid down the law with the team that no one should be mixing business with pleasure – and that includes him. Their jobs are too risky, and emotional entanglements could result in mistakes or, at worst, be fatal. As a result, we see these two do their best to totally ignore each other and for a whole year, surprisingly, they do manage to resist the pull.
Howard does a really good job of showing Levi’s mixed feelings for ‘Babe’, aka Jina; his desire to want to set her up to fail, to push her to quit, so he can pursue something with her, while finding her stubbornness and her inability to back down too appealing to stomp all over. I’m not sure I can classify this book as feminist but there are some really attractively modern behaviours written into the choices and behaviours of both leads and while I can’t say I’ve read a lot in this particular genre, what I have read has always lent itself towards… misogyny? Overwhelming alpha characteristics? Which isn’t to say Levi isn’t an alpha male – he is – but there’s a really great balance between Levi and Jina that I didn’t expect, and I found their dynamic totally compelling.
What did drag the story down, though, was the fact that… well, it dragged. The blurb suggests it to be action-packed and fast-paced and while the synopsis doesn’t lie exactly, it did give me a different impression as to how the book would play out. Without spoiling too much, the real meat of the doesn’t actually occur until well into the second half of the book. For almost sixty percent of this read, it’s mostly training scenarios, agonizing over attraction, Jina pushing herself, running through her mantra of not being a quitter, and fantasizing over the one make-out session that she and Levi do give in to. The buildup affords us a good sense of Jina’s journey, and provides excellent background for the leads prior to the time when they get together, but it does end up being repetitive and it could easily have been pared down a bit without losing any emotional traction.
There’s also a behind-the-scenes threat we glimpse through a third PoV and honestly, that’s the least interesting part of it all. The ambush/set-up plot just doesn’t work, and when reveal comes, it’s pretty much a letdown. I’m fully behind the concept and have seen it done well, but the execution here just isn’t successful.
When all is said and done, however, I did enjoy my first experience with Howard’s writing and was entertained by her characters. With a faster pace, more plot and less plod in the first part, and a more expert villain, this would have been an all-around win. In The Woman Left Behind, the author has created a fun set of varied personas, an interesting group dynamic, and a delicious hate-to-love set-up with her leads, and I’m looking forward to picking through Linda Howard’s very extensive backlist.
Buy it at: Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Apple Books/Kobo
Grade: B-
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/03/18
Publication Date: 03/2018
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.
I'm the kind of reader who sneaks in quality kindle time while at her boring deskjob because if I can't get paid to read books, I might as well read books while getting paid. in addition to being ridiculous, I'm also Canadian, a hockey fan, never far from my iPod, and perpetually covered in cat hair.
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I finally got the hold for the ebook from my library (apparently everyone wanted to read this too) so I am a bit behind the times. Howard used to be an autobuy for me but it’s been many, many years since I have purchased one of her novels. I am still interested enough to request them from the library but not so excited I want to plunk down my cash for one.
I was particularly exasperated with Troublemaker because (and I am a crazy pet owner myself) the dog was pretty much the heroine’s obsession in life (unlike the very cute “supporting” dog in Open Season that I felt added to the story).
I really enjoyed The Woman Left Behind. In many ways it seemed like classic Howard, yet in a much more modern way. A lot of Howard’s romantic suspense novels are as much about the process as the actual suspense. Open Season was as much, if not more about Daisy’s reinvention and her building a new life than it was about the bad guys being after her. Son Of The Morning has that lengthy part about the heroine toughening up and the changes she goes through when life throws her a curveball. All the Kings Men’s heroine goes through a similar process. In this case I found Jina’s journey and evolution very interesting as it was almost an anti-makeover in the “beauty” sense.
As others have already pointed out, previous heroes have just run roughshod over some heroines but Levi and Jina seemed very equally matched with their own strengths and weaknesses. I was troubled that Jina kept pushing herself through things she despised like the parachuting, so the ending for her actually satisfied me. I never felt like she gave up. If she were Demi Moore in G.I. Jane and her goal in life was to make the elite forces it would have been disappointing, but as Jina finally decided to choose what she enjoyed, not just what she could “endure” it seemed like more of an empowered choice than doing something that made her miserable just to try to prove something.
I thought Levi and Jina had a lot of chemistry but their situation caused it to be a bit more drawn out that I would have preferred. I think they needed at least one more romantic encounter in the book than they had. Even a scene like the one on the plane where he takes a few seconds just to touch her when he can.
If you are looking for non-stop steamy scenes, or even a ton of suspense, this probably isn’t the book for you. If you enjoy Howard’s character building and like really getting to know the plucky heroine (and enjoy Howard’s sense of humor) then you will probably enjoy this one,
I echo what others have said about the long time it took to get to the title part of the book. There was a LOT of introspection throughout the book from both main characters that could have been edited. But I did enjoy reading about the training, especially the parachute jumping. Ai yi yi!
I’m going to pass this one up. I’ve taken Howard off my autobuy list long ago but Troublemaker was a waste of time for me that finally made me take her off my buy list completely. The new Howard has an irritating tendency to write massive amount of repetitive details that is excruciating to go through and unnecessary to this reader. The word ‘drag’ on this review simply confirmed that this tendency is alive and well in this book.
I agree with Jane that Howard’s books have changed in the H/h dynamic, but it doesn’t bother me. In fact, I am enjoying the direction she has taken. I actually enjoyed reading about Tricks, the dog from Troublemaker, and I don’t believe she overtook the story. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, too. I’m looking forward to this one. Great review, Hollis.
I did really enjoy this one, a bit more then you as I kind of loved going along for the ride as Jina did her year of training, but you’re not wrong about the book taking a long time to actually get to the stuff that relates to the title. What’s interesting to me is how much Howard has changed. I’ve been a long-time reader of hers, very few books I’ve not read, and not only has she moved a bit more to action/mystery/suspense/romance combos but the h/h relationships have changed big time.
In both this one and Troublemaker the heroes are definitely Alphas in terms of their jobs, but they’re almost beta when it comes to the relationship with their partners. Or perhaps it’s that Howard is allowing the strengths of her heroes/heroines to be more evenly matched. I think Howard has always written strong heroines, but they have been paired with some truly over-the-top guys in her earlier novels. In many the hero has acted so horribly that major groveling is required, like MAJOR. And, don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved a lot of those books. But I do notice the in-balance of those past novel-relationships a lot more now. And so while I think the romance has dropped off in these new endeavors, I am really loving the dynamic Howard wrote for TROUBLEMAKER and THE WOMAN LEFT BEHIND.
Oh, and also interesting to me, in TROUBLEMAKER part of what overtook the story and lessened the romantic content was how much time was devoted to the heroine’s dog. Here the thing that gets a bit too much space is all the training. I thought I read that Howard’s dog had died while she was writing TROUBLEMAKER so that was why there was so much page space devoted to the dog, but the pattern repeats here. So I’d love to see an interview with Howard and find out what has changed for her.
loved hearing your thoughts on this author, Jane!! thank you for taking the time to comment. I especially love hearing about the evolution of Howard’s alphas/couple pairings from a longtime reader. I think it’s fascinating to see that growth over the course of one’s career and how she’s adapted (and I think rightly so) to what we readers want more of. I found the match-up endlessly fascinating and could’ve read so much more of it.. and, as mentioned, way less of the rest, haha. : )