Locke (Corps Security #5) by Harper Sloan

Locke by Harper Sloan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2/10/14 – downgrading from 3 to 2 stars. I think the 3 stars I originally gave it was a guilt ridden 3 stars – since I hated book 2-4, and sort of knew I probably would not like this, I felt unfair reading and reviewing it. But on second (and third and fourth) thoughts, I am actually really angry about how certain issues in this book were dealt with.

★Book Basics★

Genre: – Contemporary Romance
Series: – 5th in the series – Advised to read the rest in the series first
Love triangle? – No
Cheating? – No
HEA? – Yes
Would I read more by this author? – Probably not
Rating – 2

★Review★

Ok, so yes, my expectations for this book swung from being really high to really low. I loved the idea of Maddox from book 1, but after having had issues with most of the books in the series, I doubted it would be good.

We jump right into this book, with the history of Maddox and Emmy – some we guessed at – we knew Maddox had a tortured past, some came out of the blue and for no other reason I could see other than shock factor – ie – Emmy’s past.

Both had such over the top ridiculously nasty evil families, they were almost laughably cartoonish in their villainy. If they had started flying around on brooms and giving poisoned apples to people I would not have been at all shocked.

So Emmy has a pretty awful life, and apparently, the reason we had no hint of this before really, or why she seems almost unaffected by it and can have sex, and oh – not gentle sex either, with Maddox, 2 weeks after being raped and still carrying bruises, when years before, she had been repeatedly raped, and these rapes being the only sexual experience is basically explained away with “oh I promised myself I would look forward and not back” Riiiiiiggghhttt…….

Oh and the same tactic is used to explain away any lingering trauma from her having shot someone in the last book as she can barely remember it and it was like an out of body experience – the end, lets not mention it ever again.

If you want to put these sort of awful situations in a book, then at least give it the bloody page time and emotion it needs.

The first 50% was too much back and forth, on every page it felt like both Maddox and Emmy, kept changing their mind about if they could give the relationship a go.

The second half was better, although the Corps security guys once again make me question how the heck they make a living, as someone always gets beaten up or killed in these books. But once they stopped fighting, and Maddox committed to trying the book improved.

But, overall, not as good as I wanted, but by no means the worst in the series.

Not enough page time is given to important issues, they are just brushed away with a single sentence, too much time given to the characters wallowing in self pity.

I still wish Coop had not been killed off – he was the one character that seemed happy, even with his childhood, he is the only one who actually managed to not wallow in self pity and sadness, so clearly that is why HE HAD TO DIE!!

So basically, I will finish with the one lesson I have learned from reading this series.