Vanished by Lisa Hughey
On August 5, 2019 by Jaye
Vanished by Lisa Hughey
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Blurb
He’ll do anything to find his brother’s killer….
His final opportunity…
On an unsanctioned mission, Scottish NCA officer Hamish Ballard tracks his brother’s killer across the ocean…until he hits a dead end at Adams-Larsen Inc and Associates, a supposed PR company. Owner Jillian Larsen knows more than she admits, and he’ll do anything to uncover her secrets, even fake an interest her. He’s got one week to complete his goal. But his attraction is all too real and using her when she was just a name in a report was easy, but now he’s falling hard for his foe.
Her first responsibility…
Jillian Larsen’s purpose in life is helping people who are in jeopardy disappear and she has never betrayed a client. When a Scottish hottie accuses her company of hiding a criminal, she has no intention of revealing her client’s whereabouts or giving in to her inconvenient attraction for the sexy pain in her ass. But what does she do if the woman she relocated turns out to be a criminal? When her business partner vanishes along with their complicit client, can she use Hamish to track them down without risking her heart?
Their only chance…
He needs her resources. She needs his intelligence. Working together is the only logical choice, but it means jeopardizing everything.
This is a 50,000 word enemies to lovers romantic suspense. The third book in the ALIAS series featuring a badass heroine and a swoony Scottish hero.
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Review
I’d like to start out by saying what I liked about this book. Jillian Larsen, the heroine, is a business owner. She’s not just a business owner, she’s a business owner who made a conscious choice to choose the right thing over the proper thing, suffered for it, and is carrying on without a lot of fuss or self-pity.
Not a lot of self-pity. More on that later.
The hero, Hamish, has an interesting backstory. It turns out he’s the twin brother of a celebrity. Said celebrity was only a celebrity if you’re into rugby, which doesn’t come up often since the entire novel takes place in the US, but it does come up. It comes up once, but it does come up. His brother’s death occupies almost all of Hamish’s thoughts, but his brother’s life in no way overshadows him.
The villain of the piece – without giving away spoilers – is a woman, which isn’t something I see a lot of in romantic suspense. Granted, in the real world, the kind of person who commits the kind of crime that gets turned into a romantic suspense novel is usually a man. (Not all men, yes, I know. Moving on.) Still, it’s refreshing to see the acknowledgement that we’re just as capable of violence and evil as the men are.
The writing is excellent. It was easy for me to visualize every setting, every scene. There are some fun moments, which are absolutely necessary to break up the seriousness of the story.
I did have some issues with the book. I think some of my issues are less specifically with Vanished, because they come up over and over again when I read m/f romance.
First, Hamish (the hero) is always right. He is right about the main villain; he is right not to trust the other villain. He is right about Jillian’s colleague and he is right about whether or not they should sleep together. And if Hamish is right, Jillian must be wrong. Jillian must be wrong about the main villain’s virtue. She must be wrong about her boss, because Hamish must always be right.
This isn’t the case with all romance novels, but it’s a standard I see in a lot of heterosexual-centered entertainment and every time I see it it’s like nails on a chalkboard. In every conflict, it is the woman who must give way and when the plot calls for someone to be wrong, it must be the woman. Seriously, even shows like House Hunters do it. I was sitting there reading this last night, and the author probably isn’t any better or any worse than anyone else about it, but I was still hitting my head against the wall.
Every conflict, every “twist,” was predictable. If there was a difference of opinion, if there were two ways something could go, Hamish would be right, and it would be Jillian who would have to re-evaluate, be cut down to size.
Which brings me down to my next issue. Hamish describes himself as deeply driven, and he is in fact deeply driven. He’s got a powerful motive to do what he does.
That said, if someone bugged my office, planted a tracking device on me, followed me everywhere despite my having clearly told him not to, interfered with my livelihood, and constantly tried to assert his dominance over me, I certainly would not sleep with him. If I had Jillian’s experience with making people disappear, I would probably murder him. Sex would not be on the table, unless it was a means to overpower him.
But Jillian, despite having the strength to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming pressure and having a long career in law enforcement, doesn’t want to be tough. She wants to be soft and nurturing, because… reasons, I guess. And then suddenly it makes perfect sense to sleep with the guy she knows bugged her office.
Again, banging my head against the wall here.
I felt bad for Hamish with regards to his brother’s death. That said, the guy has a serious problem being told no, especially when women are the ones doing it. I’m not saying he’s a rapist – he’s very careful to get Jillian’s consent when they’re being sexual.
He overrides her in literally everything else, but at least he’s a decent man in that.
His boss is a woman. She tells him to drop his obsession with finding the person he blames for his brother’s death. He decides he doesn’t have to listen to her and traipses on off to America. Jillian – a woman – tells him she’s not going to work with him, but he decides he’s just going to override her and follows her around until she gives in.
Some people call this persistent. I call it creepy, obnoxious, and deeply in need of a good boot to the head. Possibly several. But the narrative in this book is that Hamish always knows what’s best, so I’m just going to be glad he’s not part of my life and move on from there.
Some people are absolutely going to love this story. We’ve got a lonely, type-A heroine who gets fulfillment from her relationship with a man many will view as “alpha.” The characters didn’t’ work for me personally, but I still got a lot out of the suspense aspects and had a lot of fun with the premise.
I received a free copy of this book for my own reading pleasure.
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