Avon, $5.99, ISBN 0-06-059124-2
Romantic Suspense, 2006
On the bright side, maybe Gennita Low is glad that this book isn’t titled Sexing Up the Agent. This book is quite closely related with the previous book The Hunter so readers unfamiliar with that book may want to read it first. This book acts as a spoiler for the real identity of a secondary character in The Hunter.
Llallana “Lily” Noretski learns that she is a sleeper, someone who is reprogrammed by some people (let’s just say) to set off a bomb once these people give her the appropriate stimulus. Now Lily is on the run, afraid of the extent of her reprogrammed status and living out her own The Bourne Identity story here. The hero is, surprisingly enough, not Bradford Sun who had a thing for her in The Hunter but Reed “Joker” Vincenzio who is ordered to stop Lily and retrieve some weapons (a spillover from the plot in the other book) belonging to our bad guy Dragan Dilaver.
Lily could have been a very interesting heroine but the common problems that plagues Gennita Low’s previous books are also here. The pacing can be inconsistent and there are times that the story moves at a snail’s pace. Many of the scenes in this book make me want to groan. Anyone up for the whole “We are stuck in closed proximity with nothing to wear!” scenario? There are many fancy details and jargon dropped here and there to give this story atmosphere but the actual execution of the story is rooted in mundane and often groan-inducing plot devices. Reed is a familiar hero from this author – he swears often and when he’s not whipping out his gun or doing other gung-ho acts, he’s thinking about sex often. As for Lily, she has all kinds of sexual abuse and torture in her background, which to me comes off as another common plot device, usually from authors who are trying to compensate for a strong heroine by making her so vulnerable and weak in other ways.
With an interesting premise that holds lots of promise, but ultimately with an execution of the premise is pretty mundane, Sleeping With the Agent comes off as an effort that tries very hard to be more extraordinary and special than it actually is.
