Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I thought I would like this book. Nice premise, decent start. But by the time I finished it, I wondered that I bothered to. I'm not going into extensive over-view of the plot. I try to give these reviews without too much spoiler material. But I have two gripes about this book that killed it for me. The heroine: She's a hardened warrior woman who dealt with major abuse from her mother's family for the first half of her life because she's a "half-breed" before she finally escaped and eventually found her feet. That was a long time ago and now she's a hard-core free agent. The author endowed nicely - cool weapons, high skill, and a dash of magic. But she hasn't "recovered". Nearly every other chapter has her in panic attacks, paralyzing flashbacks, drowning in nightmares or some other severe post-traumatic drama. If the story was on a shorter timeline, like if it had only been 5 years since her escape; or if her self-centering exercises - the first part of a mantra and a fidget for touching her sword - actually worked. But as is, it's hard to believe that she could be functional by herself this long without anything setting her off before. The story itself mentions a previous case about finding a girl she knew and cared about. But I find it hard to believe. At least twice in any given chapter she loses focus because of invading memories and several times in the book the only thing that pulled her out was someone noticing she was losing it and interfering. This woman does not strike you as the type who can work alone. She's...broken. This kind of heroine is not repulsive to me. We see it a lot in this genre; but then the story, action and timeline need to reflect that. Don't take a barely-keeping-it-together psychiatric case-study and ask us to accept she's running the show. The love interest: While he sounds especially scrumptious, he does not, at any point, become likeable in this book. First he is an abusive, controlling, condescending jerk. And while she is often overly antagonist in her approach to him, I can understand why. He hurts her and threatens her regularly. I honestly did not want them to get together no matter how obviously he was meant to be the love interest. Though he shows some contrition for his actions it's not nearly enough to make you cheer on their coupling. And that made no sense. One chapter they are still at each others' throats, then he suddenly starts calling her "baby girl" - which I truly hate. I get that quirky nicknames are a thing that guys do to the strong heroines in these novels because...who knows. I was fully prepared to accept "kitten" for Kit. But to call a grown, supposedly strong and independent, woman you just met "baby girl" is not charming. When guys do that on the street we call them creeps and walk away...fast. The author tries to cover with this "rut" of his, but says he has a choice and doesn't fall for the nearest female. So why (and when and where) did he fall for her? There was no lead-up. It was just "I'm still really sorry for almost strangling you...and I also kinda like you now." And she returns the feeling! The "I just need a bond to push out the (obviously) bad guy vamp" turns into "Even though I'm an emotionally-stunted hyper-defensive post-traumatic victim and you've been mistreating me this whole time...I kinda like you, too". What?! Not buying it. Don't wanna buy it. Because even after all that, at the end, he's still grabbing, pushing, and pulling her around at will. Why's it okay now? Summary: I took interest in the story itself. A lot of the surrounding characters were likeable and the author proposed an interesting premise. But I could not gel with the two lead characters. I won't be reading another one and I'm glad I paid so little for this one. Sorry.