"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."
- by Morris "Morrie" Schwartz, American sociology professor and author -
3 1/2 stars. Darn, I really want 1/2 stars!
This sentence outlines everything so perfectly - how I feel about this book:
"And so she walked around Riley's house - it was quite modern, without a lot of personal photographs at all, like a beautiful shell, and Teddie could see why Riley no longer spent time here."
Gosh, I am so sorry to admit that I am disappointed. I'm going to state my reasons/problems below. The quote I've chosen fits quite perfectly and it's totally AMBIGUOUS.
Kell and his buddy Reid are on a black op mission in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to assassinate a villain when they're 'meeting' a woman. The woman is being chased by men in a car. They're able to save her. It's Teddie (Theodora). She's a photographer and videographer and she also worked with UN goodwill ambassadors. But her work was now over for the foreseeable future because she's in witness protection and on the run. Yeah, Teddie is in a hell of a lot of trouble...
After the death of her father, stepmother and half sisters, she's put into witness protection because she's the only one who witnessed the murder of her family. The authorities are not able to catch their killers and they believe that her father, a U.S. diplomat living in Khartoum, was the head of a kidnapping ring. Teddie wants to find out the truth and is determined to prove that her father's innocent of any wrongdoing. Therefore, she escapes witness protection and comes to Mexico and meets her father's friend, Samuel Chambers. Teddie believes that he is the guy who framed her father and had her family killed. They meet at a local restaurant for a talk. That's when the men who killed her family enter the restaurant. She panics and runs away - she ends up with Kell and Reid. Kell decides to help Teddie.
Night Moves is book 4 in the Shadow Force series. The beginning is superb and then...I don't know but I felt like I got lost somewhere. The book is fast-paced and there's quite a lot of action which I liked a lot! And I loved to see that a few other H/h (especially Dylan and Riley) of previous books had their moment to make an appearance in Night Moves. That was well done. Stephanie Tyler delivers yummylicious guys without end - as usual. Stephanie is one of my favorite authors and I just expect more when I'm reading her books. She's got this cool and detached writing style. Don't get me wrong - I like that. But I was missing something here. I didn't feel the connection to the main couple. I wanted MORE EMOTIONS and I wanted more depth to the story. And to be honest I couldn't feel the love between H/h. It just didn't ring true. The development of their 'relationship' was not good enough. The chemistry was almost non-existent and the sex scenes (sorry, no love scenes here) were lukewarm at best. Kell has quite a lot of baggage to deal with but so has Teddie, and I think when it came down to that part they fit perfectly. Both of them were rather emotionless.
Gosh, I want 'Saint' back!!! He's a secondary character of the Hold trilogy and I LOVED this guy! His story is told in Hold on Tight and it was my favorite book by Stephanie Tyler. How can you not love such a man? Yeah, there's really something about regretting bygone times...
Night Moves is a stand-alone book but if you'd like to explore more of Stephanie's work, then I'd highly recommend you to read her other books as well - and do it in order.