Alone with an Escort by Angela Claire

​ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
 
Publication date: 01/16/2018
Kindle Unlimited: No
Cliffhanger: No

This is one of those difficult books for me to rate. Books I loathe? Those are the easiest to review. I can rant for DAYS, folks. Books I love? Those are pretty easy to review, too. I can gush about a book just as easily as I can rant about one. But this one...I didn’t loathe it, but I didn’t love it, either.

That said, I guess I’ll just start with what I did like about it:

1. Jonathan and Veronica have a kind of funny meet-cute where Veronica assumes Jonathan is the male escort her friend hired for her as a birthday gift. Yes, it’s unrealistic that a science-y woman like Veronica would so easily accept a male escort into her home (and body), but hey, it was funny enough that I was willing to suspend my disbelief for a bit.
2. Jonathan and Veronica have some super-hot chemistry and lots of witty banter that I really enjoyed.
3. I LOVED the fact that Jonathan’s mother was the baddest badass in the book. Go, mom!!
4. The action scenes were sufficiently...action-y. Everything moved along at a nice pace.   
5. Veronica is a STEM heroine, and I pretty much always love STEM heroines.

Here’s the stuff that gave me pause:

1. Jonathan was a walking contradiction. One minute he was all, “oh, we can’t have sex because I’m a badass secret agent and I’m supposed to be protecting you” and the next he’s giving her orgasms. Make up your  mind, dude! Either you can be together or you can’t. That wishy-washy crap is for the birds.
2. Veronica was awfully concerned with getting laid. I know it was her birthday and she’d been expecting a male escort before people starting shooting at her, but she almost got herself in trouble a couple of times because she was trying so hard to seduce Jonathan and/or make him jealous. There’s one scene in a bar that particularly got on my nerves, because Veronica was behaving like a hormonal teenager. People always wanting to have sex while bullets are flying is one of the main reasons I don’t read too much romantic suspense these days.
3. The twist at the end about Jonathan’s background was a little ridiculous.
4. There are some points in the story where I think this could be classified as rom com, but then the body count starts going up and I think it’s probably supposed to be romantic suspense. It’s almost like the book is having a bit of an identity crisis. Does it want to be witty rom com, or gritty romantic suspense? I don’t think it knows.

But, all my gripes notwithstanding, I still enjoyed this book, which is a testament to the quality of the writing. It was a good read. Was it a great one? No. But I enjoyed it. And when it comes to romantic suspense, which is my least favorite category of romance, that’s saying a lot.

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
It’s stigma-free. No rehab needed.  

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