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‘The Rogue’ is actually a follow up to a very brief stint that tells of the one-nighter both Addison Hale and Ryan Dempsey had a few months ago, until she ghosted him the morning after–where their second-chance sort of comes after a Ryan’s sister encounters a psychotic and very, very dangerous stalker.

The case itself is a simple but slippery one: the perp in question is slick and sly, knows the right words to say and how to shield his identity, throw the whole case of characters for a loop as they try to build a case against him. Proximity to the case and each other means that Ryan/Addison can once again get close…and see where this might lead them the second time around.

I liked Ryan and Addison as individual characters and even thought they were capable and pretty well-rounded as protagonists. Kimberly Kincaid definitely threw some role reversal into the mix here with the opposites-attracting kind of vibe: Ryan being the impulsive, emotive one, while Addison was the commitment-phobe who needed to learn to let people who cared past those walls of hers.

Yet as a pairing, I struggled to see the chemistry together or gotten the sense that they needed each other past this case, even if their relationship was certainly written as distant-friends first, then a sudden lust that turned to love which I had a little harder bit of a time believing perhaps. In fact, I kept on reading because of the suspense–while not trying to be weird about it–but the case took my interest first, followed by a relationship that I thought was lukewarm at best. It’s not in any way a slight to Kincaid’s writing clearly, but just wasn’t feeling too much for this particular pairing.