TEST
Up Close and Dangerously Sexy is the first book in a new romantic suspense series featuring covert agents. It’s a promising start to the series, (despite the predictable and rather unbelievable setup for this particular story) and I’ll be checking out the next installment.
Allie (Allison) Carpenter is an interior designer living in Los Angeles. As a surprise birthday present for her identical twin sister Callie (I know, cutesy-poo twin nicknames), Allie is decorating Callie’s barren apartment. Callie is supposed to be returning from a trip on their birthday, and Allie falls asleep in the apartment waiting to surprise her sister.
Unbeknownst to Allie, Callie is a covert operative working for CIA black-ops group Watchdog. When Callie fails to report in as scheduled, Watchdog hires free-lance agent Drew Miller to find and capture her. Watchdog is concerned that either Callie’s cover’s been blown or she’s changed sides. When Drew finds Allie asleep in Callie’s decoy apartment, he assumes he’s found his woman and brings her in.
It doesn’t take long for Watchdog to figure out they’ve got the wrong woman. When they start digging into Callie’s disappearance, they find that she’s in a coma in a hospital in Paris, the victim of a hit and run car accident. Of course this leaves Watchdog in a bind: Callie is working undercover as arms dealer Gina Callahan, and there’s a big deal scheduled to go down in a few days in L.A. The target is a man known only as “The Ghost,” and Watchdog really wants to capture him. Murdock, Callie’s superior, comes up with the brilliant plan of having Allie pose as Gina during the deal.
Drew is adamantly opposed to this idea. Allie is untrained, inexperienced, and putting her undercover will risk not only her life, but the lives of the other agents working the op. When Drew realizes that Murdock is going ahead with the plan regardless, he signs on to run the op and handpicks a team of agents. They spend the next few days putting Allie through an intensive training regimen to get her prepared.
Let’s get the glaring problem out of the way: the ridiculousness (and total predictability) of putting Allie in undercover. She’s an interior designer for god’s sake! I just don’t find it at all believable that the CIA would even consider this, let alone actually go through with it. This setup could have been a huge problem for me, if not for the fact that everything I was thinking in my head, Drew’s character expressed — vehemently. Just having the hero voice what I was thinking made the plot more acceptable to me somehow, and I was able to ignore my disbelief and focus on how the story unfolded.
Now here’s what worked: Allie and Drew were both enjoyable characters, and their deepening feelings for each other felt real. The sex is plentiful, but their chemistry is strong and connection believable. Drew is from a military family, and he learned early on to never form close connections to others. But he is drawn to Allie in a way that he doesn’t anticipate, and finds it hard to fight. Allie is impulsive but smart, and her conflicting feelings of courage and fear were believable. With the exception of two dumb things she does near the end, her actions throughout the story felt realistic. She’s nervous as hell, but is able to think on her feet when it matters.
One of my favorite parts of this story was a subplot between two characters that I would never have expected. To go into more detail would move into spoiler territory; suffice it to say that I was kept thoroughly intrigued wondering how it was going to play out. It was a nice and unexpected addition to the plot, and is the primary reason I’ll be picking up the next book in the series.
Overall I found Up Close and Dangerously Sexy an entertaining read. It was fast-paced, and I never felt that the suspense plot or subplot shortchanged the main romance. In fact, it was pleasantly surprising that Anders was able to achieve such a believable connection between the hero and heroine given everything else going on in the story. If you think you can get past the whole twin-posing-as-covert-agent setup, I recommend this book for those romantic suspense fans that like the shorter format category books provide.
Grade: B-
Book Type: Series Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 06/03/09
Publication Date: 2009
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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.