Joint Review – In His Sights by Tina Beckett

Publisher: Carina Press
Publish Date: Out now
How we got this book: NetGalley

During a hostile situation at the American embassy in Angola, Special Forces officer Cole Scalini is ordered to take out a suicide bomber and rescue a hostage. Simple enough for a sniper with his training, until he realizes that the woman in danger is neither a random nor a typical victim. She’s pregnant.

Callie Nascimento is carrying her sister’s baby as a surrogate when she discovers her sister was killed under suspicious circumstances. Now Callie’s become a target. Her only hope for survival is a rebel of another kind, a handsome loner of a military man who’s risking his life to
save her.

As Cole strives to keep Callie safe, fighting the terrain and terrorist attacks, his respect for her grows. She’s strong, capable and sexy as hell. But before he can explore if their attraction is something deeper, he has to get her safely back on U.S. soil. Because the enemy is much closer to home than they realize.
*Blurb from Goodreads*

MinnChica: I am a huge sucker for romantic suspense, especially ones done with sexy military heroes. Unfortunately, while I liked the overall premise of the book and thought that Beckett had a very strong plot, Callie drove me nuts. To the point that I couldn’t enjoy the story. Add in the few pregnancy issues that had me rolling my eyes every few pages, and I had a really hard time enjoying what could have been a really strong romantic suspense.

E: I was really looking forward to reading this.  The back cover blurb hinted at several things I thought I would enjoy.  Pregnant heroine on the run from the bad guys.  Hero was the elite military type. They were both in a foreign country needed to make their way to safety.  I thought they would be boiled down to their pure essence and along the way fall in love with each other.  Instead what I got was something that I had to fight extremely hard to finish and not chuck the ereader.  I had such a negative reaction to the heroine that I actually wanted the hero to turn her over to the bad guys and find himself another girl.  I was more invested in the interactions between the hero’s buddy and a poor model who had to deal with mistaken identity then in the primary characters.

MinnChica: There were times that I was totally with you on wanting Cole to just hand Callie over and wipe his hands of her. Between the bleeding heart for the bad guy and her constant “he can’t be THAT bad” mentality, she had quite a few TSTL moments. But for me, the parts that constantly frayed my nerves were all the pregnancy references. I never had any problem reading about pregnant heroines before, as long as it was believable. But maybe since I’m currently pregnant, little things tend to stick out to me. Like the fact that Callie’s sister named the boy before she died, when Callie was only 4-5 weeks pregnant. Ummmm… Not possible. Or how Callie was always able to feel the baby move at 16 weeks whenever she placed her hand on her tummy. Ummmm… highly unlikely to not only feel movement through your hand, but also that the child would move – AT YOUR WILL. Every time the pregnancy and baby was brought up, I just wanted to roll my eyes and wished over and over again that the heroine wasn’t knocked up. I think the story would have been strong without it.

E: MinnChica it wasn’t just you being pregnant.  I have never been pregnant but listening to my sister and watching my mom through three pregnancies I found myself highly skeptical.  It was like the pregnancy was there to make me, the reader, feel that the bad guy(s) was the most awful thing around.  Instead I was extremely annoyed by the “convenience” of it coming into play.  I was willing to give Callie the benefit of the doubt with her first TSTL moment but once Cole told her that the bad guys were asking for her BY NAME she should have realized that now is the time to survive not change clothes, steal hand sanitizer, find a bathroom, take a bath, go into the woods when told not to, sneak away to CALL her brother-in-law using her credit card number.  In other words each time I thought she couldn’t get stupider she did and it was wilful stupidity not just ignorance.  She made the decision each time to do something the hero had told her NOT to do.  I will say that I think the plot twists Beckett included were unexpected but the characterization ruined this read for me.

MinnChica: I agree, Callie really did ruin the book for me, especially since I thought that Beckett really had a strong overall plot. I liked the suspense in the book, I thought all the twists and turns and the overall story line (minus the pregnancy) was an incredible idea and had the foundation to be a really strong romantic suspense. The bad guys were truly awful and evil to the core, the man behind the curtain came as a bit of a surprise toward the end, especially since Beckett did such a good job of leading the reader on a wild goose chase of who-did-it. If it came down to just the plot, I would give Beckett high marks. But like E said, Callie and the pregnancy just pulled what could have been a really strong book down into a hard-to-read struggle.

E: I am not a huge character driven reader because I really need a good plot but I like my characters to keep me interested in what they are going through while I read.  In this case I was not able to do that even though  Beckett was able to keep me guessing about the identity of the ultimate string puller.  That was a benefit but it was extremely difficult to appreciate that benefit when I had to fight through thee characters to get to the plot.  I agree the bad guys were pretty darn bad.  I was impressed by their justification for their actions.  It wasn’t that they didn’t have a conscious but that they decided that the ends justified their means, regardless of those means.  If you happened to get in the way then that was your own fault and you would pay for getting in the way.  Unfortunately based on my strong dislike of the heroine I am not inclined to pick up anymore of Beckett’s writing.

I give In His Sights a D-

MinnChica:  All in all I really struggled with how to rate this book. On one hand, the plot was really strong and the suspense aspect was so well done and executed so well. On the other hand, Callie was so difficult to read and enjoy as a character. The pregnancy drive me bonkers every single time it was brought up, and while I liked Cole, he wasn’t anything remarkable in the romantic suspense hero category. I really wanted to like this book and thought that it had some incredible potential, but it just wasn’t for me.
I give In His Sights a D+

Carina Press | Amazon