Shelli Stevens, $2.99, ISBN 978-1370034901
Romantic Suspense, 2017
Shelli Stevens’s Protecting Phoebe is a prime example of how the need to include a certain amount of sex scenes in a story can work against the suspense.
Take Phoebe Jeffries. She is on the run from an abusive ex. She works at a women’s shelter called Second Chances, an aspect of the story that adds nothing aside from being an excuse for the hero to be there and for the author to base an entire series around that shelter. Anyway, Phoebe is scared, afraid, et cetera… and she does nothing to protect herself here. She still walks alone in the dark and all—something that makes her look pretty dumb but hey, anything to turn her into a damsel in distress for the hero to do that rescue is romantic thing, I guess.
As it happens, Officer Craig Redmond is in the shelter, having escorted a woman there, when he is asked by the shelter boss to talk to Phoebe. Phoebe initially claims that there is no way anyone can help her, and oh, she also didn’t file a police report against her violent ex or get a restraining order against him in the past, so there is nothing anyone can do for her this time. Seriously, is there anything this woman will do to not make herself a sitting duck? Still, compelled by the hotness of the hero, she tells him everything anyway.
So Craig decides to… ask her out for a date. Have sex with her.
What are these people doing? Isn’t there a violent ex supposedly out there, possibly endangering Phoebe? Why are they acting like the ex will conveniently sulk in the shadows while they snack and shag like they have all the time in the world… oh wait, that’s what the ex ends up doing anyway.
The suspense elements and the romantic stuff here are so compartmentalized in a manner that makes it hard for me to believe that there is any threat on Phoebe’s life. Am I supposed to take Phoebe’s problem seriously when the hero seems more interested in dating her than protecting her? Phoebe keeps saying she is scared, and she keeps looking over her shoulder or in the mirror now and then, so that the author can remind me that Phoebe is a damsel in distress and hence it is so romantic that some hot guy is here to protect her… but our heroine doesn’t do anything to help herself and the hero doesn’t either.
Hence, the ex feels like an obvious non-threatening gimmick to give the hero an excuse to start talking to the heroine, and for the heroine to act all terrified and hapless in order for the hero to come off as more, well, romance hero-y. Oh, and he’s also here for the obligatory “exciting” denouement to be shoved off the scene for good.
Actually, everything here feels like a gimmick, as nothing and nobody feels natural. The suspense doesn’t feel real, and the romance doesn’t either as it’s basically an “instant love, just add crazy ex” thing. Protecting Phoebe feels like a by-the-number product created using algorithms based on whatever is selling on the Kindle list and whatever those “how to make a million dollars in just one day by publishing gobbledygook on Kindle” webinars are saying.
