Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Kendra Elliot's 'Hidden' is billed as a romantic thriller. I just finished the book last night, and I'm still trying to figure out where the "thriller" part comes in. Is it perhaps in the thrill Lacey feels when she first sees Jack Harper's steel blue eyes or catches a whiff of his "clean male" scent or intuits his "cut abs"? Is it in Jack's appreciation of Lacey's curves "in all the right places," even when he first notices her at a murder scene? Because, certainly, it's not in the heavy repetition of those descriptions, thrown at us over and over again. It's definitely not in the obvious signals of who's going to end up with who, starting from page 12 and never letting up. I didn't see it in Lacey's profession as a forensic odontologist (teeth expert, basically), which is important in the first chapter and then never comes up again. And I sure didn't see it in the impending serial killer investigation, which takes place mostly in the background of Lacey and Jack's budding and tempestuous romance. I could have at least respected all of this if the story had held any surprises or unexpected turns at all - but alas, it was not to be. I give Elliot credit for at least being consistent and telling a story that played out. The problem(s) being that the conclusion was predictable, the writing ham-handed, the villain bland, and the romance was locked into a track more steadily than a freight train, and about as interesting. To put it simply, don't go into this expecting a thriller on the level of Jackson, Reichs, Jance or Cornwell. There's none of that here. I tend to like my thrillers dark, twisty, and unpredictable, and 'Hidden' hits none of those marks. It's a book without a bite.