Review: You Belong to Me by Edward Kendrick
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Publish Date: November 26, 2014
Reviewed by: Heller
How I got this book: E-Arc from Publisher
“Corey Byrne loves his family—as long as he only has to see them once a year. Since he’s not out to them, it makes things… tense. Returning to his job at a homeless shelter after Christmas, he finds someone has left him a very expensive present. Soon, he begins to get messages from the anonymous gift giver. Then Corey’s friend Brad is murdered in Corey’s apartment and undercover detective Scott Reed is assigned to protect Corey. As they work together to find the killer, they realize they’re starting to care about each other. However Scott is unwilling to act on his feelings unless Corey comes out to his family and coworkers.
As the threats from the stalker intensify, Corey is forced to admit that love is too precious to hide from. Perhaps now is the time to be honest about who he is and accept the possibility of love in return—before it’s too late.”
Unfortunately this story didn’t work for me. I found the POV’s jumped around too much for me to really settle in and enjoy the characters. As much as like a good thriller I found the reveal for the bad guy just came out nowhere. That robbed more than a bit of the excitement and tension that had been building up because I had a few suspects in mind, so when even my long shots didn’t make the grade the stalker story line just fell flat.
I found I was tremendously disappointed with what happened to Brad. I wish that we didn’t get a POV from him because it just saddened me to no end when he was killed. I thought he and Corey had a lot of chemistry and there was a great possibility with their encounters.I didn’t mind Scott but he really came into the story late in the game. Corey asks himself if he and Scott will still be together after eight months. I wonder the same thing because I don’t see Scott changing his line of work so I have to wonder how that’ll impact their future.
One of the things that worked the best for me was the relationship between Corey and his brothers. I found all their interactions fun and emotional and enjoyed the read quite a bit whenever they got together.
While there were flashes of interest here in some of the characters I found that too many POV’s and and uneven thriller story line dragged this read down for me.
I’m giving You Belong to Me a D