TBR Challenge: Jami Alden - Hide From Evil

Sean Flynn should feel lucky he’s alive. But his betrayal by a close friend—and two years on death row — have left him feeling only numb. When his conviction was overturned, Sean retreated to a quiet woodland cabin, far away from prying eyes. There, he believed the past couldn’t come back to haunt him . . . until she showed up.
Overcome with guilt, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Krista Slater can’t forgive herself for convicting an innocent man. But when another brutal murder reveals chilling, new facts about his case, she must turn to Sean for help. She’s ready to face his anger, but the desire in his eyes ignites a need she’s never felt before. Shadowed by danger, Sean and Krista uncover a twisted maze of deception and betrayal—all under the dangerous gaze of a cunning mastermind who will do whatever it takes to keep his evil secrets safe.

Comment: It's October already and this quickly it's time for another TBR post.

The theme for this month is "danger zone" and that immediately reminded me of romantic suspense novels, which is pretty much what Wendy alluded to in her reminder post. Anyway, I would have plenty of choice and decided to go with a book I saw was in my GR shelf for a long time. So much that I have no idea now why I've added it in the first place, but I suppose it was the fact the main couple started of as a sort of opposites attract or even a little of enemies to lovers? These are tropes I tend to enjoy.

In this novel we meet Sean Flynn (a silly side note: how incredible this character has the same surname of the main character of the book I've read immediately before and I happened to have randomly read them in a row?) who has been two years on the death row for a crime he didn't commit. Now he was released and his conviction overturned and he only wants peace and be left alone. However, his life cannot go on a predictable quiet path because Krista Slater, the lawyer with the prosecution who helped put him behind bars, shows up at his place feeling guilty and wanting his help to catch the real culprits of the crime he was involved in. The problem is that someone doesn't want them to dog too deep and they become targets. Will they be able to find the truth, dodging betrayals and also fall in love in the process?

This is the first book I try by this author so I had no expectations, to be honest. I saw this was also the second installment in a series titled Dead Wrong but I was not interested in the premise of the first book and would not be trying it. I hoped this second book would have enough structure on its own for the story line to make sense.

The story and the characters actually made me think of some books by Sandra Brown, who is an author I like. I have not liked all her books equally, nor have I read everything by her, but I've read enough that this comparison immediately popped up in my mind. Sandra brown's suspense books often have a hero or heroine who pair up to discover something or make something right out of a wrong, while dealing with bad guys who are mostly sleazy instead of really evil.

Honestly, this pretty much sums up the premise of this Hide from Evil, and basically Sean and Krista need to join forces and find some truths, not only to clear Sean's name completely but also to find the real criminals. I'd say the issue for me was that, unlike the majority of the suspense books by Brown I've enjoyed, I was not such a fan of this one because the writing style wasn't as compelling and I felt bored for a big part of the reading experience. I rarely felt like I was truly interested in the characters and in what they felt like accomplishing, so the whole thing was rather meh to me.

Sean and Krista have history, which I obviously could not infer because I didn't read the first book. Since they weren't the main couple in that first book, I can also suppose I would have not missed much anyway, but it seems evident some tension between them exists because of both their roles. I wanted to see how this bridge of sides would happen now that they would be working together somehow, but lust or physical attractiveness only go so far to convince me they would work out on the long haul.

Stories in which a couple falls in love while on the run, or on a road trip aren't anything new in romance-land, but it still need to be convincing and to me, Krista and Sean just didn't have enough time nor a past connection to make me believe their feelings weren't more than the stress and the adrenaline of their situation. At times, it even felt like the writing was rather juvenile when they were thinking about one another... their characterization was, overall, very weak, and whether it was Sean and Krista or any other character nothing would change. I feel I was not convince by the author to be emotionally invested in these two as individuals, much less as a couple.

I was also a little annoyed - but this could be just my personal preference - by the scenes we have from the villains' POV. Unlike some authors whose work I still love despite this technique (Karen Rose, for instance), in here this felt a weak link because the bad guys' POV felt very much like a caricature. I can't decide if I feel they are simply sleazy people with terrible morals and personalities or this was meant to showcase how ridiculously unscrupulous they were and that was what made them dangerous. Either way, I easily skimmed their parts.

Apart from the romance and the antagonists, what is left is like one of those movies where hero and heroine do things they wouldn't normally do unless they had other choices and on the way they supposedly discover truths about themselves and have to deal with betrayals and things they couldn't think might happen. If this were a movie,it might be entertaining enough but I struggled to be interested and immersed in the lives of these two and what they felt was a necessary task for them.

The plot and structure of this book aren't novelties, but I still wish things could have been done better. I'd have preferred for the bad guys to feel the stress and the worries more, for instance, or for the good guys to get the upper hand in a more ingenious way. Since the story turned out to be a little repetitive and the romance not truly convincing to me, I quickly lost interest and felt quite glad when I've finished. I even considered DNF'ing but I didn't want to think about another pick for the challenge, so I stuck with this one. There are some potentially good elements, but overall this one could have been much better.

Grade: 4/10