Uneasy Alliance, by Jayne Ann Krentz

I'm back in Montevideo, boo-hoo! I wish I were still in Punta del Este, but oh, well, everything good has to end at some point, right? Anyway, I read a couple of books in my last days of vacation that I haven't posted about. One of them: Uneasy Alliance, by Jayne Ann Krentz.

He had a definite eye for beauty

Meeting Torr Latime was the last thing Abby Lyndon expected from her Japanese flower-arranging class. He was dynamic, good-looking, sexy - and he created much better floral arrangements than she did! He was also the distraction Abby needed in a time of crisis, for someone was stalking her...

Discovering her plight, Torr gallantly offered to protect her. He took Abby to his secluded cabin, where the atmosphere was intimate and safe - and conducive to seduction. Abby found all thoughts of the stranger menacing her melted away when Torr drew her yielding lips to his...

Not a very good one, I'm afraid. A C.

Uneasy Alliance started better than it finished. In the first part of the book, Torr was a guy who was trying his best to be considerate, to find a way to succeed in having a relationship with Abby, the woman he was so attracted to. He was conscious of the fact that she had a problem with possessive guys (a well-justified problem, IMO), and he contemplated that fact when dealing with her. I liked that part of the book, enjoyed how Torr was not completely sure of how to conduct himself and how Abby responded to him.

In the second half, though, all Torr's good intentions were apparently discarded, and he became all heavy-handed caveman. "You're mine, you belong to me", not allowing her to leave when she wanted to, and all that nice behaviour. He frustrated me. He kept insisting that he was not like the guy who'd scared her before, but I'm sorry, as far as I'm concerned, he acted very similar.

And that ending! I found it reminiscent of the one in Loving Evangeline (one of the worst I've ever read), with the hero drawing a picture of what their life together would be, a life which sounded revolting to me. All that crap about how she needed a man to protect her against her recklessness and keep her in line... yuck!

Oh, and please, how more TSTL could Abby be to do what she did to precipitated the final confrontation. And about that final confrontation: the suspense subplot was much too predictable, telegraphed miles before, and I didn't like it.

It's too bad the entire book didn't continue in the same vein in which it started.