Heart of Danger by Lisa Marie Rice

Narrated by Seraphine Valentine

There are certain things that are hallmark Lisa Marie Rice. This is either a bug or a feature depending on your perspective. Heart of Danger has all the LMR aspects I expect, with a dash of paranormal. Suspend your disbelief and leave it at the door, strap in, and enjoy the ride.

Set in the not too distant future where cars are made of tough resin and run via electricity, where the current model of tablet is the iPad 8 and iPhones are up to iteration 15, Dr. Catherine Young is compelled to find Tom “Mac” McEnroe and enlist his aid in rescuing a fallen comrade who is being subjected to horrible (and illegal) medical experiments in the lab where she works.

Catherine has a kind of ESP where she senses people’s emotions when she touches them. Because of this ability, she was an outcast at school and has led a very solitary life with very few friends (Hallmark 1).

Mac is a member of Ghost Ops, a team of former Navy SEALS (the team responsible for the death of bin Laden no less). The team performed extreme covert ops until something went wrong a year prior to the main action in Heart of Danger. Since then, the three surviving team members have holed up in a super-seekrit facility in Mt. Blue in northern California. They have made a little community of other outcasts from society but all have hearts of gold. The entire facility is, to say the least, improbable. I recommend you don’t spend too much time thinking about it.

When Mac and Catherine meet, despite his initial suspicion of her, he is nevertheless attracted. However when she touches his skin, their connection is more powerful than anything Catherine has experienced and the communication seems to go both ways. By the third day, Mac and Catherine are deeply in love, Mac has decided to marry her, and they are basically living together (Hallmark 2).

Mac is so overwhelmed by his love and passion for Catherine that he has to be inside her as much as possible. There’s a lot of sex but not much by way of foreplay (Hallmark 3).

Many other improbable things happen until the HEA – it’s a wild over the top ride. You either go with it or not. While there are some aspects of the story which had me rolling my eyes a bit, I was prepared to get on the ride and have a bit of fun. The villain is eeeeevil and the good guys are righteous and amazing and the action is almost non-stop.

I don’t think I’ve heard Seraphine Valentine narrate before. Apart from the bit toward the end where she clearly had a cold (for which she can hardly be blamed), it was a fairly enjoyable experience. She adds a bit of rasp to her voice for Mac but it isn’t incredibly deep. One of the other Ghost Ops men, John, is described as a “surfer dude” but to my ear he sounded like he was high most of the time.

Ms. Valentine read the over the top action fairly straight, not trying to heighten the atmosphere by overdone narration. The story is out there enough that it worked for me. That’s not to say she didn’t have expression in her tones – she did, but she didn’t go all Jerry Springer with it either.

The narration conveyed the passion and connection between Mac and Catherine but there was one aspect of the audiobook that didn’t translate very well – the style of the writing. An example …

A line of dialogue/some action

LOADS of navel gazing

Some more navel gazing

Even more navel gazing

Eventually, the next line in the dialogue/next step of action.

I found myself forgetting what had happened before the lengthy interruption at times and also saying somewhat testily “oh, get on with it already”.  This is not the narrator’s fault at all. She can only read the text of the story. In print, I would have skimmed forward to understand the dialogue/action and then (maybe) gone back to read the internal monologues. Or, I could easily have gone back to the line I had forgotten and quickly refresh my memory. It’s something that’s more difficult to do with an audiobook. These long LOOOONG gaps between single lines of dialogue were terribly obvious on audio and it did lead to some frustration for this listener.

That said, for the most part, I enjoyed the story. I laughed at some of the more outrageous aspects to it. It might depend on your mood as to whether it raises a bit of a chuckle or whether it will cause eye injury from all the rolling.

Kaetrin

Narration:  B

Book Content:  C+

Steam Factor:  Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence:  Escalated fighting

Genre:  Romantic suspense/Futuristic Paranormal

Publisher:  Harper Audio

Heart of Danger was provided to AudioGals for review by Harper Audio.