I'm at a loss of words here...maybe I just set my hopes too high? I loved Stephanie Tyler's Hold Trilogy, Shadow Force and Acro Series. So when I saw she will be releasing a new Romantic Suspense series
Then I began reading
If you are at all familiar with Stephanie Tyler's writing, you know that she usually weaves in numerous character POV's in her stories. In Surrender, we meet the main hero, Dare. Dare is the son of Darius, a Section 8 operative (A black ops group of loose cannon operatives recruited from various military branches and the CIA). Section 8 has been dis-banned, but seems that their handler/founder is now hunting down and eliminating all the original members and their families.
Dare is a former Seal who is struggling with his own demons due to a mission gone bad during which he was tortured and watched his entire team get slaughtered. He was saved by an Army Ranger, but hasn't been the same since. With the members of Section 8 now being hunted down, and his farther MIA and presumed dead, Dare finds his own life in danger. He finds out that he has a half-sister Avery, who is in the same predicament. Their only way out, so they think, is to kidnap the daughter of the founder and handler of Section 8.
About 13% into the reader finally gets introduced to Grace, the main heroine. Dare kidnaps Grace with the hopes of using her as leverage against her father, but everything is not at all how it seems.
In between the story that takes place between Dare and Grace, we get the POVs of Avery and Jem (Jeremiah). We also meet Jem's brother Key, who is the Ranger that saved Dare's life, and Gunner, the mysterious owner of a tattoo shop. There is a lot of world building that takes place, and we learn more about each character.
Now the plot itself sounded very promising. Unfortunately for me, it just fell flat. I could not connect to the characters or the story. I honestly struggled to finish this book just to see if it gets better at the end...it didn't. Dare and Grace's relationship was not very interesting to me. Their interaction and even the love scenes between the 2 were uninspiring and luke-warm at best. I didn't really see what their connection was. It seemed sudden and rushed. I struggled to get into the book from the very beginning, and then as it progressed I found my interest waning more and more.
This might have been the case of "been there-read that" for me. It also might have been the case of my expectations being too high going into this, I'm not even sure. It pains me to give a this book a less than stellar rating, but it just didn't work for me.
I will read the next book in the series, in the hopes that it gets better. But I think I'll wait to get it from the library, instead of adding it to my auto-buy list.
Perhaps readers that haven't read a lot of Romantic Suspense would enjoy this.
