Kill Without Shame by Alexandra Ivy Series: ARES Security #2
Published by Zebra on December 27th 2016
Pages: 352
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Five brave military heroes have survived the hell of a Taliban prison to return home and take on civilian missions no one else can. They re the men of ARES Security. Highly skilled, intimidating, invincible, and one by one, tested again and again Lucas St. Clair s prestigious family had a political future neatly planned out for him one that didn't include his high school sweetheart, Mia Ramon. Under their pressure, Lucas gave her up. But since surviving captivity, he s a changed man and a crucial member of ARES Security. When he discovers a dead man clutching a picture of Mia that bears a threatening message, his fiercest protective instincts kick in, and he knows he must go to her. Mia has never forgiven Lucas for breaking her heart, and she s convinced her feelings for him are in the past. But it s soon clear that isn t true for either of them. Now, determined to solve the crime and keep Mia safe, with his ARES buddies backing him up, Lucas will have to reconstruct the murder victim s last days and follow a lethal trail that leads right back to the fate of the woman he still loves.
Unfortunately, this was a book that I struggled with, despite the promising blurb that made me wish otherwise. As a suspense read, ‘Kill Without Shame’ is decent, but I found myself somewhat disappointed in the textbook style it was presented in, with the whodunnit moment coming as a huge info dump by the villain, with multiple POVs that could be distracting. Yet if the suspense is decent enough, the pairing seems a weak one, forged, or should I say, re-forged in the heat of danger and uncertainty.
After a 15-year absence of doing whatever he wanted, the appearance of high high-school ex on a dead man’s belongings convinces Lucas St. Clair that he’d always loved the woman whom he’d broken up with. It’s a premise that gets my spidey sense tingling as he goes in search of her to protect her—as well as to convince them that they really do belong together after walking away from Mia Ramon supposedly for her own good. Forgive my scepticism and my own unforgiving instincts when it comes to a limp explanation that I felt Mia accepted too easily because he smelled good, had a huge ton of sex appeal, good sexual moves and a hot body. A sleek, smooth apology and it was back in bed with him, because the threat against her made it easy to lean in on Lucas who happened to be conveniently there and gave him the reason to hone in once more on her when he saw the opportunity.
As always, my issue with second-chance romances is the believability of it, particular when one party has forsaken another for no apparent good reason, then returns out of the blue expecting forgiveness and a HEA after having spent the intervening years apart trying to forget her with other women, muscling in finally because she ’needs’ him. Had the threat against Mia not materialised, would he have gone after this woman whom he proclaimed to be the only one for him? Lucas St. Clair’s bullying and controlling behaviour rubbed me the wrong way, unfortunately; keeping watch over her—at a distance—for 15 years, then dictating her actions might be romantic to some, but it reeks merely of cowardice for me personally despite Alexandra Ivy’s efforts to shed some light on the remorse and regret he has felt since he walked away from.
There’s a secondary romance in a sub-plot that never quite went anywhere and also a hint of another team member’s stalker—plot lines that are meant to tantalise for future books perhaps, but it felt squandered instead when these scenes (and the subsequent switches in POVs) detracted from the building action and suspense. On a broader scale, ‘Kill Without Shame’ has all the right ingredients, I guess the individual bits, along with several clichéd moments that put it all together failed for me.
