Elisabeth Naughton - Stolen Fury

To unearth a centuries-old secret, an archaeologist must team up with the rakish thief who’s stolen both an ancient relic and her heart…

Oh, is he handsome. And charming. And sexy as all get out. Dr. Lisa Maxwell isn’t the type to go home with a guy she barely knows. But, hey, this is Italy and the red-blooded Rafe Sullivan seems much more enticing than cataloging a bunch of dusty artifacts.
After being fully seduced, Lisa wakes to an empty bed and, worse yet, an empty safe. She’s staked her career as an archaeologist on collecting the three Furies, a priceless set of ancient Greek reliefs. Now the one she had is gone. But Lisa won’t just get mad. She’ll get even.
She tracks Rafe to Florida, and finds the sparks between them blaze hotter than the Miami sun. He may still have her relic, but he’ll never find all three without her. And they’re not the only ones on the hunt. To beat the other treasure seekers, they’ll have to partner up—because suddenly Lisa and Rafe are in a race just to stay alive.

Comment: I had this book in the pile for years. I've tried to add books to my monthly lists these past years, so that books I had for longer would finally get their chance...

In this book we meet archaeologist and professor Lisa Maxwell in the exact moment she is investigating a cave in Jamaica during her holidays. She happens to find one of the Furies, part of a set of three Greek statues, which have been searched for a long time by experts. However, after a presentation, she meets Rafe Garcia, a very attractive man with whom she hopes to spend the night but falls asleep and realizes he deceived her and stole her statue. Later, she is able to track him and while the attraction between them is as strong as before, she will not give this time... or will she? Will them? The problem is that more people are after the statue, for if someone manages to have them all, it will be quite a feat, and that means Rafe and Lisa and those around them need to run against time to find the other statues...

This did remind me of those adventure books and movies of the 90s mostly. I've actually seen references in some reviews to some movie titles which are similar to this book in plot or style and it does seem a correct comparison. I think this was a great adventure, with lots of fast paced scenes and jumps, but I will have to say that while the characters' relationships weren't any novelty, I still felt a little sad over the fact they were so predictable and lacking (to me).

The story itself isn't bad, and I was interested in reading what would happen next, even though sometimes we had scenes supposedly shady from the villain's POV which I could do without, but I was curious about what the main characters would do and how. There is a lot of travel from place to place, then some secondary characters get involved and that broadened the range of action, which made me think the action was non stop. The idea of finding the statues and what it meant was always a fascinating enough element and when a certain information closer to the end is shared, I was surprised because it wasn't such a big surprise and still I found it great.

Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention to some elements, I should confess, thus my surprise at the end, because another big part of the plot is centered on the romance between Rafe and Liza and this was the element I felt a little disappointing. When they meet Rafe deceives Liza and no matter his thoughts about it and the fact they are strangers, it was still a bit of a betrayal. I also felt slightly put off by how they think about one another at that time, I would have liked it more if their relationship had started in a different way.

I kept imagining that if they had been reluctant partners from the start and the physical and emotional attraction had developed more slowly, i'd have liked the progression of the romance more. I know this is only an impression but the constant reminders and inner thoughts about how good looking, how attractive, how whatever they felt about one another took some of the fun out of this for me. I think it would have been a better strategy if we could see their interactions and more, I don't know, subtle ways of their behavior letting us know about what they were feeling. More showing and less lustful thoughts lol, because there was a time it felt they only had superficial emotions between them.

Of course, as expected, they end up together, and there are even supposedly love declaration exchanges, but I cannot say I was fully on board being convinced about their feelings. I would have liked the author could have done things differently, if these were the characters partnered.

The secondary characters, apart from the bad guys, had their interest and I've seen some will be protagonists in future installments. I'm still thinking if I'll read them, perhaps if it suits any of the challenges I usually do.

I think there are enough reasons why the characters are captivating, there are indeed plenty of scenes where it was fun to follow their steps, and the writing style is mostly fluid and easy, which are positive details. I just think the romance disappointed...

Grade: 6/10