Alicia’s review of Freefall by JoAnn Ross
Romantic suspense released by Signet on 5 Feb 08

I’m a sucker for good Romantic Suspense, especially when the author has an obvious love for her subject. I only had to read the excerpt for Freefall and I had to have it. I hadn’t read JoAnn Ross before but her voice just sucked me in.

Zach Tremayne is a likable guy. He’s tough. He knows how to keep cool under stress and he cares about people in his life. He’s working through the affects of seeing some bad stuff in Afghanistan and personal guilt because he was in charge when it happened.

Sabrina Swann is harder to say if I liked her or not. She’s shaken by her recent experience. She’s obviously a force to be reckoned with when she sets her mind to something. She has a realistic approach to life in general it seems and she, too, cares about the people in her life.

But I really didn’t get to know Zach very well and Sabrina almost not at all. This book is great suspense. I was sucked into the story immediately and assumed I was going to love this book. But when the characters should have been building (this is a romance), I was left more than a little flat. There was a lot happening but not enough dialogue between the hero and heroine.

I’d say the book was just too busy. With distractions like building the fed lady character and the in-depth victim scenes, there just wasn’t enough space in the book left to really get into Zach and Sabrina. Really, all of the plot lines were good enough to be in there… but not all in one book. Well, besides the one about what happened with Zach that was just dropped. That one should have been left in and, uh, finished.

The intimacy wasn’t what I want, either. There was some sexual tension but when the consummation came I just didn’t care enough about the characters to feel involved. There was a lot of telling what they were doing but it just didn’t draw me in at all. I even put the book down afterward, assuming it was my mood. I re-read the scene the next day and still didn’t feel a thing.

A personal bad thing… Proportionally, very few soldiers who have been in combat come out the other side crazy. Sure memories bother them and there is counseling but they don’t all have black outs where they are lost to the real world or carry weapons while patrolling the perimeter back home. This book has too many characters who have extreme reactions in one place, to the point it feels like the rare is what is common. Having been around military men and women for all of my adult life, I can tell you they would be insulted that the romance industry is making it look like most of them can’t handle it.

But I have to disagree with the few reader reviews that say the last plot line that was tied up at the end was unnecessary. It was very important and had served it’s purpose by the time it was addressed directly. Any more would be a spoiler, but if you read it you’ll know what I mean. It affected the “who-done-it”. I had the bad guy figured out fairly early (not that it was obvious, I’m just good *g*) but I couldn’t just rest with it. This one issue kept me second guessing myself right up to the very end.

If I just wanted a good suspense story I would rate this book a lot better but I want characters I care about. Maybe a lot of the busyness was setting up the series? I don’t know but in it’s own right, I have to say this book fell short.

Grade: D

     Seeking refuge and determined to pull her life back together, Sabrina Swann returns to the sleepy Southern island of her childhood summers. The last person she expects to encounter there is Zach Tremayne, the boy who stole her heart when she was a girl. There’s a haunted look in his eyes that makes her wonder what kind of man he’s become.

     Zach Tremayne can’t forget the horror he saw in his last battle in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL. Now home on Swann Island, he’s surprised to realize he can feel anything again, never mind the sudden sure of desire for this woman from his past.

     And when together they discover danger waiting in Swann’s shadows, the woman who is desperate for peace and the man who has sworn off war will realize they are willing to do anything, risk everything, to protect a love neither saw coming…

     Read an excerpt.