304 Publishing Company, $3.99, ISBN 978-1005404857
Romantic Suspense, 2020
It is probably not a good sign when this one starts with a “Previously”. See the title? Joaquin Fuertes: The Fuertes Cartel Book 1. “Book 1”. That’s why I bought this thing, as I’m hoping that I can get into whatever this is, without having to read up on the author’s past titles just to catch up.
Oh silly me, to underestimate the need for romance authors to link everything as if every title were a splinter life form that, when reunited, would become a giant slimy tentacled blob monster and slay all life on this planet.
Joaquin Fuentes, our hero, is a long-running mayor in Portugal and also the infamous Ghost of the Fuentes Cartel. I’m not sure if it would be wise to be a mayor and still have a cartel named after his family, but who knows, maybe the author’s point here is that that country is hopelessly corrupt and overrun by gangsters, so women wanting to nab a gangster boyfriend have better move there today.
Not that I am going to get all faux-outraged over the author wanting to pass off that country as a cesspit of poverty and crime of course. After all, wasn’t that imbecile Ethan Ralph beaten up badly in Portugal just a few months ago? He claimed that the thieves wanted his man-purse, while the detractors of that… polarizing online figure, let’s just say, alleged with glee that he probably tried to pick up underage girls and got trashed within every inch of his life as a result. I know, the whole thing is hilarious in a sad, sad way.
Our heroine Sofia Chambers is a Broadway actor. Of course she is. If they weren’t a dancer, these heroines would be ballerinas or other twee feminine jobs. She and Joaquin have met previously in a TL;DR best summed up as buy all the author’s other books, plebeians.
He acts all stalker-y and broody and all toward her, like some vampire, and I’m supposed to swoon because I’m a romance reader and hence, as long as he’s hot, he’s god, and I’m got.
My biggest issue with this story, however, is its unsightly WTF-is-it-itis. This story is written as if I had already been clued in on previous stories and hence I am supposed to have built up some emotional investment in the whole Joaquin-freaking-Sofia thing.
Interspersed between scenes of Joaquin acting like a brooding vampire cliché are scenes of Joaquin having to address his subordinates on some kind of vaguely drawn plot, a plot that I can’t describe other than to tell you all that it involves plenty of yelling, teeth gnashing, and text messaging. Yes, text messaging.
Anyway, I don’t care about the main characters, thanks to how the author just takes for granted that these characters being gangster and someone I can imagine to be me, because I’ve never been to meeeeeeee faux-independent sassy heroine are enough for me to want to take out my pom-poms and twerk at them.
The suspense stuff seems to be made up as the author goes along, making me think that organized crime in Portugal resembles more of a yelling match between people with below average intelligence.
Throw in annoying gimmicks like flashbacks that just see Joaquin doing more of that same stalky-broody-moony-gnashy antics and I can only roll up my eyes. Seriously, the hero just keeps doing the same things over and over—stalking, brooding, yelling, shouting, repeat and rinse—that I feel rather sorry for him in the end. Poor thing, the author has made him into such a one-trick pony.
So yes, I’ve read book one of whatever this is, and you can count me out on picking up the next installment. If this one is any representation of the author’s typical work, I need to read what seems like half a dozen of previous titles first to fully “get” what is supposed to be book one, hah, and I don’t have enough time or money to subject myself to such a punishment.
