Hunt Her Down by Roxanne St. Claire

I love romantic suspense. There's something about the blend of mystery, danger, and romance that just does it for me. The exact ratio seems to be what determines whether something gets shelved in the fiction, mystery or romance sections, but any book with that combination is welcome on my TBR pile. And I must say the cover of Ms. St. Claire's novel helped put it on the tippy top of said pile.

Hunt Her Down is typical beach-read romantic suspense. Tropical location, sex scenes, danger. I sometimes felt like I was reading an episode from CSI: Miami.

I found it difficult to connect with the heroine of the story. Her life experience should have resulted in a corresponding depth of character, but I found her rather shallow. The same could not be said of the hero, who I thought was intriguing, mysterious, and just a bit of a jerk.  The best character in the entire novel was the heroine's son, Quinn. The author captured the angst of being a teenager with some serious identity problems quite believably.

The suspense was top-notch, too. I figured out the plot well ahead of time, but the peril faced by the characters in the story was extremely well done and the plot moved at a frantic clip.

While the characters could have used just a bit more depth, this was well worth reading. Compelling enough to have me searching the shelves for backlist titles in the Bullet Catcher series.