Unstuck Pages

She needs his protection...

Thanks to years of government training, Evie Bishop knows how to get into places she doesn't belong—and she's very good at it. But years of doing black ops work burned her out so she returns home—to unexpected chaos. One of her brothers is in a coma and the other is in hiding, wanted for murder. Then a fellow operative from her past shows up shot and bleeding with news that an assassin is gunning for everyone involved with a past op. She's forced to turn to the one man she knows she can trust—the man whose heart she broke.

But it will come with a price...

When Dylan Blackwood proposed a year ago, Evie turned him down flat and walked out of his life. He's stunned when he finds her on his doorstep covered in someone else's blood, needing his help. He always knew there was more to her than met the eye—that Evie was never simply the pampered society princess she wanted people to believe she was. But he never expected this. If she needs help, he'll give it. Even if he can't forget her betrayal. Even if he isn't sure he can trust her. But his protection will come with a price—her heart. Before they can have a chance at a future, they'll have to work together to take down a faceless enemy who has Evie firmly in his crosshairs.

Where do I even start?

Katie Reus has a style that is easily accessible – albeit too much alike Kaylea Cross that they seem interchangeable – and a great reputation for doing up short but breezy romantic suspense reads, which is basically a compelling reason enough to want to get into her books. Some of which have even been very memorable.

‘Bishop’s Knight’ however, pushed every, single wrong button in this second-chance story and reminded me how infuriated I could get with a trope that so far, I feel few authors have gotten on with excellently.

Too many things were juggled here in a manner that ended up feeling like a right mess: Evie’s broken family that the series would eventually be built on, her haphazard CIA job and her past relationship with Dylan Blackwood. This was done with scenes flipping between all three that got me whiplash, more so when the plot rather ambitiously tried to rebuild her broken relationship with Dylan along the way. In fact, much of the action seemed tangential and things to do with Evie’s past, with a host of secondary characters that I couldn’t quite care less about coming in and out when all I wanted was to see this second-chance trope getting vindicated.

The long and short of it was, I thought Evie/Dylan’s relationship needed more special handling which Reus didn’t quite deliver, particularly when it come to the thorny issue of letting Evie get off easy because Dylan wanted her so much and was willing to overlook all she did to him. Where I expected a kickarse heroine, all Evie was fleshed out to be was a protagonist who knew her away around firearms but proved a coward in every other thing concerning Dylan.

Now how the heck do I even get behind a pairing when Evie had no original intention of reconciling with Dylan or seeing him again except for the twist that brought her back? That she’d built the relationship on a lie, despite constantly insisting that her feelings were real, then did nothing about it even when she was supposedly consumed with regret and made Dylan work for her left me too disappointed in this start to even get invested in it all.