Review of Private Maneuvers by Denise A. Agnew

Denise A. Agnew
Private Maneuvers (Hot Zone, #3)
Samhain Publishing, April 2008
Genre & Keywords: Contemporary, Uniformly Hot: Special Forces
Rating: êêê
Heat level: ¹½

Private Maneuvers is the third installment in the Hot Zone series by Denise A. Agnew which is about soldiers. The protagonists of this third book were already introduced in the second, Unconditional Surrender. The hero, Jake, was one of the Special Forces soldiers that came to rescue when the heroine of that second novel was on a tour gone bad in Mexico. The heroine, Marisa, was part of the travelling party. The moment they met, they instantly felt attracted but didn’t act on it. Now they meet again when Jake takes a job as a temporary bouncer at Marisa’s uncle’s tavern. Marisa is working there too as an accountant and there happened to be some threats. Jake admits that he took the job to get to know Marisa better. Marisa doesn’t want to become involved with Jake because of a former bad experience with a soldier boyfriend. Piece by piece they get to know each other and their secrets and insecurities are revealed.
The plot is well dosed and contains some good elements. But the storytelling is a bit faltering at times. The dialogues are sometimes not very smooth or flashy either, but I liked it that Jake and Marisa talked a lot about serious things, their past issues and feelings, before they fell in bed with each other. What I missed, in the previous books as well: the hero and heroine having friends with whom they interact on a regular basis and in a different way than with their lovers. It can tell a lot about someone’s character. And it was good to have some suspense added although the threats never got really threatening. The physical parts of the story were a bit disappointing when it comes to quantity. And all the talking beforehand diminished the hotness a bit ;-). But the lack of quantity is made up by the high quality of the elaborate love scene. It’s sexy and sweet, as the hero and heroine of Private Maneuvers are.

Back Blurb:
A woman craves. A man wants. Their collision pitches them into the hot zone.
Hot Zone Book 3

Sometimes a woman craves what she shouldn’t want…
Marisa Clyde wants nothing to do with the soldier acting as a temporary bouncer in her uncle’s tavern, even though the stoic, six-feet-of-smoldering hunk rescued her during a tour gone bad in Mexico. While those few short moments sent their sexual tension screaming off the charts, a devastating hurt in her past now blocks her willingness to surrender to him. He’ll only be in town a month. If she can just wait it out, he’ll soon be out of her life.

Sometimes a man wants more than a woman is willing to share…
Jake Sullivan watches Marisa like a hawk, well aware his need to protect is messing with his mind and making him care way more than he should. Priding himself on clinical detachment in the game between man and woman, he figures once he’s slept with her, she’ll be out of his system for good. But that’s before he experiences her at a deeper level—and learns she just might be in danger again.

Warning: Beware of sizzling sexual tension and extreme emotional connection between hero and heroine. Sex, when it finally happens, is enough to blister

Review of Male Call by Denise A. Agnew

Denise A. Agnew
Male Call (Hot Zone, #1)
Samhain Publishing, May 2007
Genre & Keywords: Contemporary, Uniformly Hot: Iraq, Love Letters
Rating: êêêê
Heat level: ¹¹

This is the second book by Denise Agnew I’ve read. My first one (Unconditional Surrender) happened to be the second novel in the Hot Zone series. Male Call is the first one in this series. I wasn’t very positive about Unconditional Surrender but I’m glad to tell I liked Male Call a lot better. The background stories of the protagonists are simple and clear, and therefore plausible and not interceding or disrupting the storyline. Again the hero is a hot, well-built military guy, but now he’s actually being a soldier from the start of the story. The pen pal thing with actual letters is, in this era of email, a bit far-fetched but sweet and well-written. The H/H falling in love through their letters is completely believable and makes you anxious to read about them finally meeting each other. And when they do, it’s great.
Their attraction is tangible and goes from sweet to hot in a short time. Sometimes I wondered about the language, for example what to think of a sentence like this: “Sean’s body moved like poetry until the distance between them collapsed.” (p. 37). I’m not a native English speaker so it could just be me, but it seems weird and it’s hard to picture what’s meant by this. But the important thing is that the story is developed well and the characters are portrayed nicely and the plot flows naturally to a satisfying end!
I’ve got books 3 and 4 in this series to look forward to and another two books by Denise Agnew on my TBR pile, Under His Protection and In Her Defense, about SWAT guys. I’ve bought these books partly because of the beautiful book covers. I also discovered that there’s a third SWAT-book, and that Ms. Agnew has written a series about firefighters (Meltdown and Combustion). So a lot of hot heroes that I’m gonna add to my wish list. In the meantime I will also try a few free stories from the authors website that I recently learned about, look here>>> if you wanna check it out for yourself.

Back Blurb:

Her sexy letters are his only lifeline in his dangerous world…
Successful computer software engineer Eve Carmichael melts under yet another hotter than hot letter written by Reserve army soldier Sean O’Callahan. Yet Eve can’t take the thought of his life in danger overseas, and she resolves to get a sex life—and a life period. That means forgetting Sean before anything bad can happen to him. To celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday, Eve plans a trip to Male Call, a male review club. Still, she worries about Sean. She hasn’t received a letter from him in too many weeks. And oh, how she longs for those flirtatious, hot letters.
Sean finds Eve’s letters to be the only lifeline in his increasingly chaotic world. As their feelings grow hot and heavy, he can’t wait to return home and kindle that pure firepower.
When Eve receives a letter from Sean saying he’s been wounded, her fears are realized. But fate and a little mischievous planning by her friends will serve up the greatest surprise of all.

Review of Unconditional Surrender by Denise A. Agnew

Denise A. Agnew
Unconditional Surrender (Hot Zone, #2)
Samhain Publishing, October 2007
Genre & Keywords: Contemporary | Uniformly Hot: Special Forces | Reunion
Rating: êê
Heat level: ¹

The ingredients of Unconditional Surrender were promising, but, gosh, this book is poorly written! The hero is a muscular Special Forces soldier, the heroine a sweet but insecure archaeologist and they haven’t seen each other for years (twenty to be exact, which is in my opinion a little bit too long to make it convincing that they still want each other). Now they are back in town for their high school reunion and their attraction revives. But another girl from their past intervenes and the heroine’s dangerous vacation becomes the subject of discussion and causes problems in their newfound relationship. Only these issues are not convincingly causing a problem at all. They seem to be written into the story with the single purpose to add friction to the relationship but don’t appear genuine at all, because the author hasn’t worked them out very well. This book in general lacks believability; I didn’t buy any of it, not their love, not their attraction, not their concern, not their dialogues, not any of their feelings. I really hope this will get better in the other stories in the series, since I already bought some other books by Denise A. Agnew.

Back Blurb:
She wants the adventure of a lifetime and isn’t willing to sacrifice it for any man… All he wants is to keep the girl he loved and lost safe, even if she hates him for it…
Archaeologist Fredricka “Freddie” Bodine returns to her hometown for her twentieth high school reunion, unaware that her old crush, Keith Wallace, has blown back into town. One memory is etched deeply on her brain—the high school prom where she shared a single, emotionally revealing dance with him. They’d both left town after graduation, feelings unresolved and teen angst firmly in place.
Keith doesn’t want her to travel to Los Diablos, a lawless area he’s visited during Special Forces ops, and the place where his sister was killed years ago.
As they grapple with family pressures and the exploding passion between them, their battle of wills may just lead them to the truth living in both their hearts.