Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes a bit, though it’s not a light hearted book

Should I read in order?
Yup. I jumped into this one and was okay with it, but other characters and past events are referenced and I’m sure there’s some build up of character for these two mains in the prior book. So to give it the best chance of enjoyment you should try to go in order.

Basic plot
Jilly has had her heart broken and she really just needs some sister time. She travels to Japan for a visit, not knowing her sister and husband are in hiding. Jilly gets roped into all sorts of danger when she arrives, and is rescued by Reno, her adolescent crush.

Give this a try if you want:
- Plenty of action! These two don’t sit still for long.
- Medium to higher steam
- Unrequited love – the heroine has loved the hero since she first met him years ago
- Tall heroine – both the hero and heroine are described as near 6 feet
- Tattooed, bad boy hero, innocent and a bit naive heroine

My thoughts:
Oof. This book! It could have been SO GOOD!!! It had so many elements I was totally loving and into and things I have wanted in a romance.

But there was so much that drove me nuts too.

Reno is a jerk. Which is fine, because I loooooove me a jerk hero. But I also want him to eventually feel some remorse or at least change his behavior by the end. And I only felt that happened in the smallest amount. These two fight almost the entire book. And the worst thing about this book was I was just not convinced of their love by the end. I wasn’t convinced he really loved her and they would stay together.

Jilly is sweet but also a bit frustrating. She makes a few dumb and dangerous decisions that immediately get her into trouble.

While I didn’t love the characters banter, this could have totally just been the contemporary lingo rubbing me the wrong way after reading decades of historical romance lol. But I wanted more character depth too. I won’t that against the book because I did choose to dive into book 5. I’m sure there was a bit of build up of the characters in the prior stories.

What got me about this book was it just felt so repetitive. I loved their first meeting together. Danger, grabbing, secrecy, hurrying to safety. I loved that. But then it was a repeat of the “THE RUSSIANS ARE HERE!” “RUN!” Enter new area. “THE RUSSIANS ARE HERE!” “RUN!” Enter new area (insert some groping and/or sex) repeat basically the entire book. Though at the end of the book you get to replace Russians with Japanese. It was just...It got predictable and annoying to me.

I still give 3 stars because there were aspects I loved about this book. I wish I had liked it more. But, suspense isn’t my favorite thing so as a friend pointed out perhaps I shouldn’t be reading romantic suspense :P

Also! I wanted to love the sex and again I loved PARTS of it, but overall I was a bit disappointed in it sadly. It was explicit but I wanted….more? More explicitness. More details. I guess I’ve had some authors spoil me and I just want all the details now.

I would definitely try another by this author but I don’t think one by this series. I plan on trying her historicals soon.

Here’s a few random parts that I wanted to note from the book

I LOVE this stuff in romance. Yes. Grab me. Please.

She took a step backward, her bare feet silent on the tatami mats, when something came at her from the darkened cavern of the bedroom, swooping down on her like a giant bird of prey, clamping a hand over her mouth before she screamed, holding her back against his body in an iron grip. And it was a “him”. Taller than she was, and much, much stronger. Any attempt she made to struggle was swiftly countered. She kicked her long legs back, and one leather-clad leg caught hers as he pulled her back into the bedroom with rough hands, closing the door, trapping them in there.

She immediately stopped struggling. He had one arm wrapped around her waist, like an iron bar, pressing against her ribs. He loosened the pressure slightly as he felt her stillness.

He does try to care here

He moved away from his spot against the door, opening it. He turned off the light, plunging them into darkness once more, and he took her hand in an unbreakable grip. “Just stay with me and look straight ahead,” he growled. “Why did you turn off the lights? I thought we were safe.” “There are some things you’re better off not seeing.”

This part I didn’t really understand. I don’t get how he thought her fearless, strong or adventurous. They meet, she is in danger, hides, passes out, is in danger again, runs...I don’t get how any of that has been established about her character.

She was like her sister in many ways – fearless, strong, adventurous. Most of the women he slept with would have been babbling hysterically by now. But Jilly had merely endured, even as she passed the dead bodies and escaped hired killers.

Did enjoy this part when he comes back to rescue her while she’s freezing in the woods and she tackles him in relief

He lay still beneath her for a moment, then pulled her arms away from his neck, pushing her up so he could look at her. “I’m hard to kill,” he said. There was an odd expression in his eyes, one she couldn’t read.

He does give her his jacket (love) but calls her an idiot (eww) – and don’t get me wrong I can LOVE a jerk hero but name calling is just...I don’t know. Immature?

So arrogant! Lol

“I’m not having sex with you, even pretend sex.”
“I don’t remember that I asked you for sex. If I’d wanted it, we would have already done it.”

Love the scene in the capsule. That was probably my favorite thing of the whole book.

They were on their sides, face-to-face, and she realized belatedly that she should have left her bra on. Left all her clothes on, and borrowed a suit of armor, as well. She was lying plastered up against him, her legs almost as long as his, hip to hip, breast to chest, faces too damned close.
“Go to sleep,” he said, his voice cool and bored. She tried to move back, but his arm snaked around her, holding her there.

(some skipped)

A second later Reno moved, from what seemed like a sound sleep to a pantherlike speed, and she was lying beneath him, pinned, and in the darkness she could see his eyes glittering, staring down at her.
And for a moment the world seemed to fall away, as his mouth lowered toward hers.


This was kind of cute in a weird way – when he refuses to masturbate after she goes to sleep

Like a twelve-year-old kid, he wanted to keep his erection, and think about her.


Yes, yes it is.

Was it rape when someone forced an orgasm on you? Maybe.


This is sweet

The nape of her neck had to be the hottest thing he’d ever seen, vulnerable, the spiky blond hair curling slightly above it.


And when she chucks a shoe at him. Yes. Yes! Hands on the wall caging her is my favorite!

He rose, slowly, moving toward her with sinuous menace, and if Jilly had been any kind of coward, she would have backed up.
“I told you not to hit me again,” he said in a low dangerous voice.
She wasn’t going to react. “I didn’t hit you. You caught it.”
“The intent was there.”
Okay, so she took a step back. A couple, as a matter of fact. But he just kept on coming, and the studio apartment was very small, and he was very big and there was no where to run.
She ended up against the wall, trapped, and he put his hands on either side of her, keeping her there. “Don’t tempt me,” he said in a low growl.

Content Warnings:

-Tons of violence and death on page – throats slashed, necks broken, blood, gun shots/wounds
-Hero thinks of the heroine as an “idiot bitch”
-Hero knocks out heroine (she dares him)
-Japanese hero is thought of as “exotic” by the heroine
-Hero mentions multiple times how much he hates American women except for fucking
-Heroine punches hero in anger
-Heroine kills someone with a gun and goes into shock
-Some elements of dubcon/possibly non/con – the hero is quite pushy in a few instances and then they have sex right after the heroine kills someone and is in shock. She asks him for it but how well could she consent in that state of mind? This doesn’t bother me but could be something that doesn’t work for you at all.
-Heroine is almost thrown off a bridge and hit by a car

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: (Another reviewer noted 5 sex scenes so I could totally be missing one)

29% - kisses, fingering orgasm for her
55% - kisses, oral for her, missionary sex while the heroine is in shock
63% - kisses, breast play, blow job (not to completion), her on top, missionary
74% - kiss
91% - missionary sex