jenjn79's Reviews > Burn

Rating: 2.5 / 5

This book started off really good, but then stumbled most of the rest of the way. At least for me. After reading the first chunk of the book, I thought I was really going to like it, but then it pretty much completely fizzled. I found myself bored through most of the middle and toward the end. I was really tempted to set it aside and read the new Karen Rose book.

In Burn Jenner Redwine is your average lower-middle-class young woman. She's working a dead-end job just to make ends meet, dating a loser and just getting by. Then she buys a lottery ticket that changes her life completely because she wins 150 million (net). Now, seven years later, she's trying to fit in with the elite rich and not doing the best job of it. She has only one true friend, Sydney, and a bunch of acquaintances. Sydney convinces Jenner to go on a charity cruise with her...and Jenner's life ends up changing again.

Because government contract agent, Cael Traylor has learned that one of the boats co-owners is as dirty as can be and has something big planned. So Cael sets up a surveillance operation that involves kidnapping Sydney and getting Jenner under his thumb by using Syd as leverage in order to get close to his subject. It doesn't take long for Jenner to realize that Cael isn't a bad guy, but is doing something very important. And she wants to help. It doesn't hurt that there is an attraction between her and Cael...despite the fact that he is pretty much holding her hostage. But when Cael and his group finally learn what exactly the bad guy is up to, it's a race against time to save everyone's lives, including their own.

Like I said above, this book started out strong. The first chapter (the prologue) is set in the present with Jenner dealing with Syd's kidnapping and what she is supposed to do. Then it jumps into the past, setting up Jenner's life, how she wins a boatload of money, and how everything changes. That section really made me like Jenner, she was smart and savy and strong. I was really looking forward to reading more about it.

But after that, this book began to drag and didn't develop the way I'd hoped. A lot of the middle of this book is sort of the same thing over and over. Jenner and Cael battle it out verbally, she's handcuffed to a chair, the group is surveilling, and nothing is really going on. I was bored and wanted something, anything, to happen. But it was just the same type of thing over and over again.

Which maybe ties into the fact that in general, I don't normally care for books that are glued to one setting - like lost in the woods, stuck in a cabin, or in this case, on a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific. Those kinds of stories always seem to lack the variety of pace to keep me interested.

On top of that, the romance in this book was flatter than a pancake. I never did feel the romantic vibe of this story. Part of that is also because of my personal preferences in romance novels. I'm not a fan of "secret identity" stories where one character is hiding who they truly are. Which in this case was Cael not telling Jenner he was on official business and instead was acting as a kidnapper thug. For me, that's not a good base for a relationship. And kidnapper/captive romances...so over-used. Enough said on that.

Aside from that, the relationship between Cael and Jenner was horribly underdeveloped. The bulk of their interactions in the story are Cael telling her to shut up and do what he says and refusing to tell her anything, and Jenner mouthing off to him and demanding answers. There was no emotional development between them. They never talk about anything personal, never get to know each other, never really connect beyond the fact that he's kidnapped her. It just left the relationship between them feeling very superficial and I didn't really care much if they ended up together or not. They were just sort of there.

It also kind of annoyed me how Cael refused to tell Jenner anything. I could see initially the point of playing out his little kidnapping ruse. But once it became clear she understood something serious was going on, would it have killed him to just tell her that it was an official investigation, he needed her as cover, but couldn't tell her more? It seemed silly pointless to keep lying to her.

And the last scene of the book was mildly irritating. It didn't exactly leave you hanging, but it made me feel like there was still more of the story yet to tell.

Also, did anyone else feel like the way Howard wrote supporting characters Faith and Ryan's parts was as if she'd told their story previously? I wondered while I was reading if those two had been in another Howard book so I poked around but found no reference to them. It was kind of annoying.

So yeah...an up and down kind of book. Or more like it went up quickly, but then plummeted down and never recovered. It looks like a lot of people liked this book, but I can't say that I did. It wasn't horrible. I didn't hate it, but it was average, at best.