Secret Obsession

By: Robin Perini

Narrated by: Hana Kenny

He didn't know which was harder: not falling for a woman who was off limits or protecting her from a madman.... Scarred from the brutal murder of her fiancé, former UN translator Lyssa Cafferty sleeps with one eye open. Now a serial killer is determined to finish what he started...and she's his next target. Desperate to survive, Lyssa seeks protection from the one man with knowledge of her past. Noah Bradford, a cunning ex-marine, vows to protect Lyssa - along with the secret she keeps from her watchful predator. It soon becomes evident that Noah's growing attraction to Lyssa could distract him from his mission, but only together can they crack the cryptic messages of a killer. With time running out, it's uncertain who will come out unharmed - or alive.

©2014 Robin L. Perini (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Bad guy always ahead

This is the third Perini book I've read. It appears all of the books in the "Carder Texas Connections" series feature a baby. The action starts right away with very little buildup and no backstory to speak of. Consequently the characters are pretty one dimensional especially the heroine who is just so bland. In this book, you have the hero, the dead fiancé, the serial killer all panting after her and there's absolutely no indication as to why this is the case. The hero is very admiring of the heroine because she wants to go all Rambo (that's pretty TSTL in my book) and "she has to do something!" Through most of the book, the heroine wants to offer herself up as bait to kill the villain while the hero tries to dissuade her. She also blows hot and cold towards the hero. Her indecisions get tedious after a while. Another weird thing about the 3 stories I've read in this series is that the bad guy(s) are always ahead of the good guys and the denouement comes about more or less by accident. The good guys know the bad guy is tracking them, yet it isn't until past the half way mark before they decide to check the heroine's possessions. Come on! And the hero is supposed to a whiz kid who built his empire on surveillance equipment. I think it's harder to construct a plot where the protagonists and antagonists are better matched and doesn't have to rely on the incompetence of the good guys to drive the plot. It's also unreal that the hero basically just shrugs off the gassing of his employees, bombing of his corporate headquarters and Lear jet ......I dunno.

The narrator is too soft-spoken and her voice is too girly to do an action adventure story justice. She also lacks dramatization, not much difference between the narrative and dialog.