She also acts as a hindrance to Jon by keeping several important information from him, all in the name of the “I am an independent woman so I can do everything by myself, thank you!” mantra. Dani is drugged, moved from her hospital out of America to a secret facility under hush-hush circumstances, and she actually thinks Jon is being paranoid when he’s worried about where the mysterious people are taking her. Actually, I can see why the marriage crumbled, come to think of it, because the two characters have bricks for brains. Hmmm.Īnyway, this is one of those stories where “divorce” is just a contrivance to keep the characters apart. Or you will die and the hubby gets off with not paying alimony. The lesson here is, if you’re on the verge of divorce, stand in front of a crossfire and the marriage will be saved. When Dani is caught in a plot involving the President’s son, Jon has to come to her rescue. Her husband, who is just a paper away from becoming her ex-husband, Jon Raven, rushes to her side. All three stories have either problems of the first or second type.Ĭherry Adair starts the anthology with Playing for Keeps in which our air-stewardess Danica Cross is on a plane trying not to smack some kids when the plane takes a nosedive down. Other authors throw caution to the wind and have the characters have sex left and right (and the reader is expected to make the extrapolation that good sex is equivalent to true love) without caring as to what this shag-a-thon will do to the story. The result is a rushed obligatory “We’ve had sex – now we’re back together, yay!” relationship that doesn’t ring real. So how on earth do you find time and space to make them fall in love? Many so-called romantic suspense authors take the easy way out by making the main characters lovers in the past, thus giving the authors a way to bypass the courtship of the two main characters.

You have the hero and the heroine trapped in what are supposed to be matters of pressing urgency. The anthology Dare Me is a concise Exhibit A of why I find most romantic suspense stories that aren’t well thought out problematic. Dare Me by Cherry Adair, Jill Shalvis, and Julie Elizabeth Leto

Take me by cherry adair