Publisher: Samhain
Publish Date: Out now
How I got this book: ARC from the author
It’s more than chemistry, more than love: it’s electric.
Remy Davis does her best to live in the now, never sure when she’ll be forced to run again. She loves her work at Buchanan Investigations—there’s no better place for a woman with her special talent for controlling electricity—but she knows better than to let down her guard. And then everything changes when a man from her past, the man she never stopped loving, reappears in her life.
J.D. never thought he’d see the girl he’d once loved, the woman he thought had betrayed him. The chemistry he and Remy once felt is as strong as ever. Old wounds need time to heal, but time is running out on second chances.
A villain bent on returning them to his twisted experiments has resurfaced. But this time J.D. won’t let Remy face the madman alone: he’ll harness every ounce of his abilities to rescue the one woman who turns electric in his arms.
PRODUCT WARNINGS
There are misunderstandings, angst, and love lost and regained. Sparks fly when two special people with extraordinary abilities overcome science gone awry and some freakishly villainous bad guys.
This blurb came from the author’s website.
**potential trigger warning – sadistic guard and evidence of violence and torture**
I have to apologize to Marie Harte. She provided me with this book a few months ago and I lost track of it during my real life complications. I am so sorry for the delay. I am glad that I spotted it when I was going back through my emails. Harte has written in several of romance’s subgenres and I tend to enjoy her writing. Several of her paranormal series stem from scientific experiments either gone wrong or gone too right with the subjects facing elimination or future experimentation from someone who wants to go beyond what is acceptable. In this particular case, there are two different companies, known for quietly solving problems, extensive security, and employing those who have a bit extra. While competitors, the two companies had different limits on the sorts of jobs they tend to undertake. One company tends stick within US laws while the other just doesn’t leave any evidence behind that they went around the laws. Each tried to get a leg up on the other by hacking into their systems to gain access to records kept on individuals, corporations, or other things of interest. The previous book ended up forging a connection between the two companies, but they continued trying gain an advantage over the other.
Remy and J.D. had a shared past full of nightmares, guilt, and young love. They were both subjects of her uncle’s torture and experimentation as he tried to perfect the idea of a human battery. Not just a battery that could store energy and power other things but could also transfer their energy to another storage facility for later use. His original lab was destroyed in a suspicious fire that left both J.D. and Remy almost dead. That night was the last time the two of them had ever seen each other. Over the ensuring years, after healing and doing what was needed for survival they separately managed to find a relatively stable job while keeping their power concealed. Each ended up as an IT expert for one of the two companies.
Then came a request for protection from a wealthy man who had a few financial ties to an individual who seemed to be Remy’s uncle. In order to bring him down for good and not risk him ensnaring any other people who had paranormal gifts, Remy and J.D. needed to work together. Their first meeting was an explosive one, literally as they were set up by their respective companies without any forewarning. As they were forced into closer and closer contact it became evident that the sparks would always fly, it was just a question of how far were they willing to trust each other.
I enjoyed several things about this story but I also had a few problems with it. I loved the interaction between the guys of the two rival companies. Between the telepathy, the precognition, the ability to send an electric shock, and psychometry, it was very difficult to keep a thought or a feeling hidden. The business discussions and negotiations always made me grin. I also enjoyed the teasing and taunting between the guys.
On the other hand, I had a very hard time buying into the insta-lust between Remy and J.D. Going from J.D.’s extreme reaction when he first saw her and basically tried to kill her to an intense sexual encounter the next time they were in the same physical location gave me whiplash. His back and forth continued a few more times until another person verified that Remy was telling him the truth. I also had an issue with how he decided to assuage his guilt and let Remy “apologize” for her actions through another sexual encounter. It was almost as if in his mind sex cured all. I also had an issue with Remy, she seemed a mostly passive character when it came to her relationship with J.D. She was always reacting to something he did or something he said and continually apologizing for her methods in saving his life. She didn’t have a problem standing up to anyone else, including her uncle and his henchmen, so her behavior around J.D. struck me as awkward. As much as she did to protect him, I thought that J.D. needed to prove he was worth her sacrifice instead of the other way around.
Love in Electric Blue had its ups and downs for me. I had a hard time buying into the romance and wished Remy and J.D. spent more time re-learning each other before jumping into sexy times. I did really like the final confrontation when they were forced to trust each other and to trust their co-workers. The slightest amount of doubt and everything would have been lost. The male bonding rituals were also amusing but they served to highlight just how isolated Remy was compared to J.D. I certainly enjoyed seeing the bad guys get what was coming to them especially a certain individual who took pleasure in the pain and misery of the unwilling volunteers. While I found a satisfying ending, I was disappointed by the emotional set-up and interaction outside of the sexy times between Remy and J.D. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the guys get dragged into love kicking and screaming I just hope I get to see more of the emotional connection in future installments.
I give Love in Electric Blue a C+