 | Title: Enemy Mine
Sexual Content: References to rape, scenes of sex and sexual violence. Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Description
Lovers from opposite worlds reunite in Karin Harlow’s explosive, erotic new L.O.S.T. adventure. . . .
While tracking a hijacked cask of enriched uranium in Kyrgyzstan, L.O.S.T. operative Nikko Cruz is ambushed and left for dead. Which means he must be hallucinating when the only woman he ever loved—the woman he was sentenced to death for killing—comes to his rescue. Half-daemon Selena Guererro has secrets she’d kill for. The most important one, she’s already died to protect. Now she’ll do anything to keep her daughter safe. But she can’t just leave her lost love to perish. She injects Nikko with immortal blood serum, putting herself in grave danger.
When Nikko comes to, he is superhuman and super pissed. The mother of his daughter—the one he thought killed their child—is alive. He wants answers. He wants blood. And despite his best intentions, he wants Selena. He traces her to a mysterious terrorist cell where the cask has surfaced. First, he must retrieve the deadly material. Then he’ll take revenge on his beautiful ex. But when nothing goes as planned, Nikko and Selena find themselves burning with desire . . . and blowing the roof off their separate worlds, human and daemon alike.
Review
While two characters at odds can be good for “Will they, won’t they” tension, in ENEMY MINE Harlow has created two such unlikeable and irrevocably damaged characters, their relationship makes me think of restraining orders more than happily-ever-afters. For pure sexual chemistry, it's definitely dark, violent, and red hot. At the thought of these two behind a white picket fence raising children, however, I break into a cold sweat.
This pair has a certain amount of charisma, but Harlow does too good of a job driving a wedge between Selena and Nikko for me to want to bridge that gap. Selena is the homicidal love child of Bruce Wayne and Hannibal Lector, lurking over her nightclub and harvesting daemon body parts. Nikko is the hot beefcake combination of MMA and a bad episode of Cops, who almost kills Selena in a haze of rage. Harlow tries to write an act so heinous for Selena that the reader will be able to forgive Nikko’s attempted murder, but to be honest, she just succeeded in making me wash my hands of both of them. It is beyond uncomfortable and distasteful to read Selena and Nikko tearing each other's hearts out over the supposed late-term abortion of their child (even knowing that Marisol is alive and well), or Selena dismissing her attempted murder at Nikko's hands as little more than something that she's "still pissed" about.
The plot and world building of ENEMY MINE are well written, and anyone who doesn't mind high drama and a lot of violence mixed with a potent sexual chemistry will find a lot to enjoy in this book. The plot of international intrigue gives a unique thriller/suspense element to this paranormal romance, giving ENEMY MINE appeal across several genres. My problems with this book are definitely content, not execution, and readers who like a lot of drama and violence spicing up a romance may enjoy the risks Harlow takes with her characters.
|
|
Thanks for posting this review, I've heard quite a few things about it...mostly along the lines that it was fast paced with tension.
ReplyDeleteThose things are definitely true. If I were going to relate this book to anything, I would say it reminded me if Lora Leigh's Elite Op's series (but with vampires).
ReplyDelete