Review: Dangerous Passion by Lisa Marie Rice

Dangerous Passion by Lisa Marie Rice

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Blah blah blah. First off, this book was not as well edited as the previously two. There was a lot of repetitive language. Secondly, the heroine is very, very passive. She meets the hero, literally, in a hail of bullets and proceeds to turn over all control over her own life. No railing against fate, no recriminations, no 'let me at least pick out my own damn clothes,' nothing. She's perfectly content to remain trapped within four walls, painting, while the hero arranges everything. She doesn't even express an opinion about the food. It's all 'la la la, I love you, I shall go wherever you lead, la la la.' She does ask the hero at one point if he's a drug dealer. I could never be with a drug dealer, she says. No, he doesn't sell drugs. He sells weapons instead. You know the bad guy we saw in Dangerous Secrets? The hero is a kinder, more user-friendly, version. What. The. F!

The hero was very well-developed and very distinct, mainly because he was the driving force behind the plot. I actually liked him, despite his very clear anti-hero status, but next to the heroine's wispiness, he came off like a bit of a chauvinist. I feel like his feelings for the heroine were so intense that if she'd pushed at all or asked for anything, he would've made it happen, so long as it didn't compromise her safety.

Thirdly, the book felt very open-ended. There was a mole on the hero's staff and he was never punished for his betrayal. The author made a point of telling us how there was one 'servant' that the hero trusted above anyone else and then we never see them again. Even the Big Bad's downfall was, if you'll forgive the spoilerish pun, remote. There really was no closure on anything.

This would have easily been a four star book if the heroine acted like an actual person rather than a poseable sex toy. With regards to the series as a whole, I would definitely recommend the first two books. It's not even really a series as the books are basically stand-alones and don't appear to be connected at all. As far as Dangerous Passion goes, I'd give it a pass and jump right into the Protectors trilogy (starting with Into the Crossfire, which is actually inter-connected.