Late last year, Jennifer Estep‘s A Sense of Danger was featured on Sadie’s Spotlight’s Insta page and I ended up with a bonus copy of the book.
A SPY . . .
My name is Charlotte Locke, and I’m an analyst for Section 47, a secret government agency that tracks terrorists, criminals, and other paramortal bad guys who want to unleash their abilities on an unsuspecting mortal world. I have a magical form of synesthesia that senses danger and uncovers lies—making me a stealthy operative.
I’m trudging through another day when one of Section’s cleaners—assassins—takes an interest in me. I don’t need my synesthesia to realize that he is extremely dangerous and that he will do anything to achieve his goals—even if it means putting me in the line of fire.
. . . AND AN ASSASSIN
I’m Desmond Percy, one of Section 47’s most lethal cleaners. I’m also a man on a mission, and I need Charlotte Locke’s skills to help me keep a promise, settle a score, and kill some extremely bad people.
Charlotte might not like me, but we’re stuck together until my mission is over. Still, the more time we spend together, the more I’m drawn to her. But at Section 47, you never know who you can trust—or who might want you dead.
There was nothing wrong with this. The writing is perfectly readable. The editing is pretty clean. It’s not full of plot-holes. I liked the characters well enough. But it’s also kinda bland. The heroine is a Mary Sue and the hero is exactly what you expect him to be and nothing more (a bit of a Marty Stew too). Section 47—the para-mortal version a governmental alphabet organization— isn’t anything more interesting than any other paranormal alphabet agency we’ve all read about. The plot is pretty easy to fallow and the villains easy to figure out. All of it was fine to read, enjoyable even. But also utterly forgettable.
I did appreciate that, being assassins, the characters have a little grey to them. But it’s all lip service, the reader doesn’t actually feel any of it. The romance is pretty light, culminating in one mostly fade-to-black sex scene toward the end of the book and a HFN conclusion. All of it is fine. But it’s also all kind of ‘meh’ too.
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