Review: An Affair of Vengeance by Jamie Michele

An Affair of Vengeance
By: Jamie Michele
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: Nov. 6, 2012
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Rating:

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Undercover CIA officer Evangeline Quill stalks Oliver McCrea for one reason: the handsome scoundrel can lead her to the untouchable shipping magnate who ordered her parents’ assassination. She doesn’t want to see the pain in his golden eyes. Compassion for an outlaw, however chivalrous he may be, won’t help her exact revenge on her nemesis.

But Evangeline is the first good thing that battle-weary McCrea has touched in five long years, and even though he knows he should evade her pursuit, he can’t bring himself to turn away from her. She reminds him of the man he used to be, a man he isn’t sure he can ever be again, not with the ugliness of the underworld slowly disintegrating his humanity.

The closer they get, the hotter their forbidden desire becomes, but they’ll need more than passion to escape a deadly trap set by the criminal mastermind who manipulates both their lives.

Evangeline has been undercover in France for over three years trying to track down the man who’s responsible for killing her parents. While trying to gain access to the men who associate with Kral, she comes across a man who is looking to buy weapons for his boss through Kral’s men. Evangeline decides to try and get close to McCrea in hopes of getting close to Kral. McCrea is instantly on alert around Evangeline and knows that she’s up to something, but he doesn’t know what. Neither person knows that the other is an undercover agent looking to take down the same boss.

I’m not going to lie, what really drew my attention with this story was the Scottish SOCA (British FBI) and the American CIA agent pairing in France. They are both not used to working with a partner and when they are forced to pair up, it takes some adjusting.

There was a bit of suspense when McCrea and Evangeline start to get close to Kral but there wasn’t a lot of fighting or crazy James Bond stuff going on. But I was okay with that because there was a lot going on between the agencies, finding evidence and getting close to Kral while trying to keep their true identities a secret.

I did really enjoy the sexual tension in the story though. At first the two almost hook up but McCrea decides to call it off because he doesn’t think it’s fair to seduce a woman when she has no idea who he really is. Of course, Evangeline takes that as rejection and tries to keep her distance from him. But when the CIA and SOCA find out about the agents in the same location they decide to team up and have the two pretend to be a couple.

Like I said, there wasn’t too much fighting taking place but that’s okay because I still really enjoyed the story. I thought the characters were believable and likable. The storyline was interesting and Jamie doesn’t fill it with a bunch of unrelated nonsense. She keeps the story on point and doesn’t go off on too much inner dialogue (which drives me nuts). I am a fan of her writing style and I think she did a great job with her debut novel. I look forward to continuing the Affair sequence.

“What do you expect? I love Americans, but sometimes we make me cringe. Yesterday I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said, ‘I shaved my balls for this?'”