Never Gonna Happen by Cynthia Eden Published by Hocus Pocus Publishing on 16th June 2020
Pages: 349
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No. Absolutely not. He will not fall in love with his best-friend’s little sister. He is not that guy.
So…yeah, okay, Alyssa Kyle is gorgeous and funny, and she’s slipped into more than a few of his fantasies over the years, but Sebastian Ridgeway is not about to cross that particular line. No way. No day.
Today is the day.
Alyssa’s in trouble. Someone shot at her—actually shot at her—and now she’s getting all kinds of threatening messages. Messages that say she’s about to pay for her brother’s crimes. Only her brother is a computer gaming designer, not some secret agent. The bad guys out there have obviously made a mistake.
There is no mistake.
Sebastian and Alyssa’s brother, Antony, have been working the spy game for years. They started as hacking teens but graduated to the big leagues—and their gaming company is just their cover. Apparently, their cover has been blown. Now some of the bad guys they’ve taken down want payback—and Alyssa is being targeted. Her brother is out of the country, gone dark on an assignment, and Sebastian can’t just leave Alyssa on her own to face the wolves. Not happening. So…
Time to get close.
He moves Alyssa into his home. Provides twenty-four seven protection for her. He figures he can keep his secret desire for her in check—he’s done it for years, after all—or at least, that’s the initial plan. Until he finds out that Alyssa has been longing for him. That he’s starred in more than a few of her fantasies, too.
All bets are off.
He’s held back for years, thinking he was doing the right thing. Thinking he’d never truly deserve a woman like her. But if Alyssa wants him, if Alyssa needs him, nothing will stop him from claiming the woman who owns his heart. Not the bad guys who are closing in, not the government who wants his tech, and not even Alyssa’s big brother.
Keep his hands off her? Stay away from Alyssa? Sorry, that’s…NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.
Absolutely, one hundred percent…Sebastian will not let her go, and he will prove that he is the guy—the only one—for her.
‘Never Gonna Happen’ is funny, odd and frankly, more than a little silly. Taken in this perspective, it’s a read to laugh about and then leave aside…if that’s really Cynthia Eden’s intention.
The long and short of it is: he’s a spy, she’s not, they’re giddy-pining for each other until a threat on her life tumbles the holding pattern and brings out Sebastian Ridgeway’s obsessive nature in his bid to protect her at all costs.
There’re laughable lines there—probably unintentionally so, but who loudly announces their intention to shoot the enemy to the enemy? Or spill their own secrets about how many people have infiltrated a place? Or reveal their identities as ’spies’?—that make the story less believable than usual, adding to the impossibility of treating ’Never Gonna Happen’ seriously as an RS read. The dialogue can get cringeworthy from time to time and the flighty characters feel better suited to a sitcom about a parody about spies than a tense RS novel.
We’re not told the nature of Sebastian’s shady spy business, only that he’d repetitively done things and is using that cover to craft a persona as a gaming mogul, which lends him less credibility as a spy who simply, for the want of a better word, lacks any subtlety or finesse. In fact, he’s a protagonist that’s hard to describe, so OTT that he seems to constantly be bubbling or boiling over with flared nostrils, hard lines and dark, lusty eyes, along with overstated Alpha-possessive and protective-obsessive tendencies.
Antony—his gaming partner and spy-partner—isn’t much better: rather dim-witted and so lacking perception about human emotions that a wooden block could do a better job of life. Alyssa on the other hand, wavers between being obstinate and insecure, caving easily to her desire for Sebastian then finally saying that it was because she’s loved him all along.
The image I get in my head is of a headless chicken: a broad metaphor for the plot and the characters perhaps, seeing as it runs around but goes nowhere, when the depth of the book stops at arguments about overstepping boundaries and staying safe…and on and on we go. Needless to say, if starting out the book was great, trying to move past the halfway mark was a just real struggle, more’s the pity, because ‘Never Gonna Happen’ could have been something else other than…silly.
