3/5. Releases 8/8/2023.

For when you're vibing with... a chaste romantic thriller, a readalike for Colleen Hoover's Verity, and "my boss is maybe a murderer but like.... he's single...".

When Hazel Fox takes an assistant job on a private island, she looks forward to working with famous author Athena Quinn. But it turns out she's actually working for Athena's mysterious right hand--Mr. Remington. Mr. Remington doesn't want to be known by anyone, let alone Hazel; and the more she attempts to understand him, the more he resists her.

This book wasn't a match for me--and I think that's partly because of how it was marketed. But I think it possibly a good option for those who seek an entryway to romantic suspense... without quite as much murder and sex.

Quick Takes:

--Here's the thing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not a big fan of reading something you know you won't be into and then giving it a low rating. I like romantic suspense, though it's been a while since I've read it. I'd never read Ivy Smoak before, and I assumed based the descriptions of and reviews for her other books that this would have some heat to it. I may not have done my research well enough there. I also assumed based on the marketing for this book that it would be a) both mystery-forward and romance-forward b) kind of mysterious and sexy.

I would not personally call this romance-forward. There is a romance plot, it is prominent. I do not think it was prominent enough for this to be categorized as genre romance. It's a side quest, in a sense, for Hazel. It's not super woven into the mystery itself, the way it might be in a romantic suspense novel. One of the reasons why I suggested it as a readalike for Verity (a book I didn't enjoy, but I know others have) is that the romance feels about as central to that novel as it does to this one.

--I love the island atmosphere in the novel, and the general sense of isolation is what built the eeriness up the most (though that's perhaps broken by the presence of Hazel's friend Kehlani; while I didn't dislike her character, she very much felt like the obligatory best friend versus a character Smoak put a lot of thought into, and she didn't really need to be there).

I just feel that the style of Hazel's narration, her POV, her personality... Kind of fucked with this book's ability to be a proper thriller. Before I began reading primarily romance, I went through a period wherein I read primarily thrillers. This book didn't commit to being a thriller any more than it committed to being a romance, to be honest. If you are newer to both genres, you may be satisfied with the light touch. I don't like a light touch. With anything.

--Hazel wasn't super believable to me as a protagonist. Yes, it's typical for thriller girls to be kind of nosy, to get into shit they should really leave alone. But there was something about the way she went about it that suggested a lack of connection to reality--and not in an intentional, "unreliable narrator/mentally ill protagonist" kind of way. It felt like she didn't get how this job was a move forward in her career, and didn't value it? Which seems like a petty thing to critique about a thriller-ish romance-ish novel, but like I said, this book has something of an identity crisis, so it felt more prominent to me.

--The reality is that as interesting as Mr. Remington could be in theory... He never actually becomes a truly fleshed out character. And if only one character feels actually prominent (and she never even seems to 100% like this man) you cannot connect to the romance plot. Or at least, I can't.

The Sex Stuff:

This book is closed door, and to be honest, that seems oddly soft for a book that's meant to be dark? Definitely doesn't gel with the title or the way it's being marketed.

I feel like this was hard for me to come to an opinion on--because I'm really not the reader for this subgenre. It's not quite a thriller, not quite a romance. It's difficult for me to critique it, because I don't really know what standards I'm judging it by...? But again, I imagine that Colleen Hoover readers (or at least Verity readers) may like it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Montlake for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

So I wasn’t sure what I expected from this book, but whatever this was, definitely wasn’t it. Despite all of the creepy things happening in the story, it wasn’t at all a thriller. And the romance was just strange, because the hero was strange, and the heroine was annoying. I will say that the one scene where Hazel was on the phone with her friend and she was trying to escape Hudson’s house was so funny that I actually cried real tears while laughing so hard. And for that alone that bumps book up from a 2.5 star to a 3 star book.