Keep Me Close by Cynthia Eden Series: Lazarus Rising #2
Published by Hocus Pocus Publishing inc. on October 24th 2017
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Flynn Haddox is a dead man. Literally.
As a highly trained Navy SEAL, Flynn once worked covert missions for the U.S. government, but then his life was stolen away. Killed and placed in the secretive “Lazarus” program, Flynn was brought back from the dead and turned into a super-soldier. Now he has increased strength, enhanced senses, and a few psychic bonuses that he fights hard to keep hidden from the rest of the world. He also has no memory of his past…and a new, twisting darkness seems to be growing inside of Flynn.
Cecelia Gregory escaped death once. Can she do it again?
Dr. Cecelia Gregory was supposed to help the Lazarus test subjects. They didn’t have control of their emotions after the experiment, and her job as a psychiatrist was to break through the walls that the men had created. Too late, Cecelia realized that the Lazarus subjects were far more dangerous than she could ever imagine. The men came back from the dead, but some of them came back…wrong. Now one of the subjects has a dark obsession with Cecelia. The man known as Subject Five is hunting her. And he wants her dead.
One man wants to kill her, but another just…wants her.
Flynn feels a connection to Cecelia that he can’t deny. Not some sweet, innocent attraction—a consuming lust that makes him crave her all the time. Flynn knows that his feelings aren’t normal, but protecting her is his mission now. The man hunting Cecelia is just like Flynn—all the same enhancements, all the same strengths. And no weaknesses. One big difference, though—Flynn doesn’t plan to lose Cecelia. And he’ll fight his own darkness to prove his worth to her.
In ‘Keep Me Close’, Flynn Haddox and Cecelia Gregory battle an old nemesis whose powers and ‘unkillability’ seem to stake the odds against them. Like the vampire that can only die with a stake through the heart, Bryce the villain torments the hell out of everyone before he finally dies, but not without the menacing laughter echoing in his wake.
Cynthia Eden’s ‘Keep Me Close’ is no doubt, an overload of the senses: a popcorn throwing mish-mash of zombie and vampire lore, serial-killer-type suspense with top-secret military experiments—and is a return to the sequel that’s typically known to be bigger, bloodier, more brutal (and sometimes cheesier) than ever.
But it’s a hell of a ride that reads like part horror and suspense with some erotica thrown in to amp up the steam level, where most male characters, because of the nature of the experiments, are given free rein to be over-the-top alpha super-soldiers who are very in-tune with their primal side, with single-minded beliefs that narrow down to protecting the woman at all costs.
With Flynn/Cece’s story, there are some similarities with Sawyer/Elizabeth’s one and at some parts, it does feel like rehashing of what we’ve gotten thus far, as a super-soldier hitting the ground hard with his female doctor, then fleeing before taking the fight to the enemy. But as with any Eden book, there are also some twists and revelations that have given more depth about the experiment these soldiers have undergone, the long-term effects that we don’t know about, as well as the introduction of additional characters that have given this series scope for expansion. I’m intrigued to see where Eden will take the direction of this narrative arc in fact; it seems as though Eden herself is aware of the similarities between these 2 books, and the vein of change that’s hinted at is more than welcome.
