I write book reviews, I also write books, and occasionally I write about myself!

Wednesday 6 April 2011

365 books in 365 days Challenge ... book #23



Staying Alive - Debra Webb
Mills and Boon Intrigue
Harlequin Mills and Boon, 2008
ISBN: 9780263872569







My rating




From the back cover:

"Claire Grant, you will die. Over and over again.
A selfless act of bravery propelled Seattle schoolteacher Claire Grant into the centre of a manhunt. Now catching a terrorist depends on her – and her ability to play his deadly revenge game. One wrong move and she’ll die. And so will an innocent child. Her best chance for staying alive is charismatic FBI agent Luke Krueger – a man with his own agenda. Separate, Claire and Luke are pawns.
But together, can they uncover the terrorist’s weakness and stop the madman once and for all?"


In a few reviews back I mentioned that a book I read was like a more romantic version of the TV series 24, well this book could quite easily be a plot line of 24. Needless to say it was certainly full of action.

The heroine of the story is Claire, a 5th grade (that's year 6 to us Brits!) teacher. Claire lives a relatively normal life, however one morning terrorists breaks into the school and holds her class hostage. A pupil in her class is the son of a senator and the terrorists attempt to use this in order to secure the release of a captured terrorist. Claire is forced to shoot one of the terrorists in order to save her pupils lives, that terrorist turns out to be the only son of the leader of this particular terrorist cell. He plans revenge on Claire for this.
Enter the hero, FBI agent Jake who has been part of the mission to bring down the terrorist cell for a long time. He vows to protect Claire but makes it known that capturing the terrorist leader is priority and Claire will have to follow out all of the leaders awful instructions of revenge, even if that means Claire may die.

I really struggled to give this book a rating; I enjoyed this book very much, the plot line was excited, and very well detailed, it was definitely nail-biting stuff, and it had some really tense and emotional moments. However, it did not have much in the way of romance between the two characters. There was some nice interaction between them but not really enough for it to be a true romance novel. I did like however that their relationship was left almost open ended in that no professions of love were given, instead Claire and Jake acknowledge that they have an attraction to one another and they will give it go.
This book is written entirely from Claire's perspective and I do think it would have benefited by having Jake's perspective in there as well.

I could definitely see Jake as Jack Bauer! Hmmm, I think I'm going to have to watch the first season of 24 again...!

Xx

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