Pathforgers Publishing, $4.99, ISBN 978-1370009503
Romantic Suspense, 2016
Alexis Abbott’s Owned by the Hitman features, naturally, a hitman hero. Like many stories of this sort, though, it doesn’t trust the reader to quietly accept any not-so-nice implications that come with such a job, so Ivan Dragomirov only kills bad people, like drug dealers.
Our heroine Katy Foss is hot and beautiful, but don’t worry, she’s not a femme fatale or even a ho with a heart of gold, as we all know romance heroines only put out within seconds to the right man, and that man is our hero. She is the owner of the Amber Room, a club heavily in debts to organized crime bosses, but that’s only because she inherits the club and all the not-so-rosy baggage it comes with from her late father. Readers, be assured that she really doesn’t set out to be a moll for the gnolls.
I’m sure you all can understand my disappointment when I realize that this isn’t going to be a dark and sexy romance between morally bankrupt, sexily crazy (or is it crazily sexy?) individuals. I mean, why else would I pick up a story with a title like Owned by the Hitman?
Anyway, after gnashing her teeth and showing me in a scene that she doesn’t really like the criminally inclined sort, Katy sees this hot guy and puts out in the space of a few single-sentenced paragraphs. Hey, she’s putting out for the hero, alright, and we all know that means she is not a ho or she likes sex or anything that disgusting. Indeed, a few weeks down the road, he turns out to be a debt collector suggesting that she can pay him back by putting out some more to him and only him for a whole year.
Let’s see… being cleared of a huge debt by shagging a hot bloke that gives her multiple orgasms with just a flick of his finger, for a whole year.
Oh no, that is such a terrible fate for any woman! Where should I sign up?
The rest of the story sees Katy going oh no, he’s a monster, she shouldn’t let him… oh my, he’s sticking it into her, it’s so hot… okay, time to act all guilt-ridden and sad, so that readers won’t think that she really likes the diddling of her pudding. Repeat and rinse.
Some final drama sees her jumping into some hasty conclusions that Ivan killed her father. Oh, how I wish he did just that, if only to restore my faith in hitmen everywhere, but nah, the author is determined to remove all hints of moral ambiguity where Ivan is concerned as much as possible, even if it makes Katy come off as tad hysterical.
Anyway, this is an okay read, provided that the reader is perfectly fine with this story bending over backward a lot to make the hero as inoffensive as possible. The whole thing is really not what the title implies it to be, let’s just say. It’s far more conventional than it’s marketed to be.
Hence, I’m can’t help being disappointed because I’m not expecting the hitman in question to be indistinguishable from any random bodyguard hero protecting the heroine against the bad guys, bad guys that always show up to fill up the pages once the author has run out of positions to write about in the sex scenes. If I ever had to hire a hitman—not that I ever would, of course, and I am just saying this hypothetically in case anybody connected to the law is reading this—god, I hope that fellow won’t be anything like Ivan.
