Innocent as Sin (St. Kilda Consulting, #2)

by Elizabeth Lowell

Rand McCee just wants to be able to lose himself in his painting. After his twin brother is shot before his eyes while on a scouting mission for St. Kilda Consulting, a Manhattan-based, global business that concentrates on the shadow world where governments can't go. He has finally come to terms with the fact that he will never be able to find the man who shot his twin, the man known as The Siberian. Kayla Shaw is an Arizona banker. Little does she realize that as she has been helping a rich socialite plan how to finance an art exhibition she has been unwittingly caught up in a web of lies and money laundering. When her employer tries to buy her silence, she realizes that she is in way over her head, with no way out. Equally suspicious of and attracted to each other, Rand and Kayla must work together to stop the Siberian before they both wind up in jail - or the grave.

• ISBN10: 0061745162
• ISBN13: 9780061745164
• Publish Date: 13 October 2009 (first published 12 June 2007)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amanda]

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

The romance was kind of bland. I’ve read some really amazing romance novels by Elizabeth Lowell, but this definitely wasn’t one of them. The romance between Kayla and Rand happened fast and without the gripping emotions usually found in Lowell’s writing. There were opportunities to build on the characters (Rand’s twin brother’s death, his being a painter, Kayla’s travels, her parents’ deaths) that could have added depth to the romance but that were not capitalized upon.

In some ways, the bad guys of the story were just as compelling as the good guys (or perhaps even more so, since they seemed more believable). I am not sure that this was the intention. I also felt like the perspective shifted between characters so frequently that it was sometimes difficult to keep straight who was thinking what. Some of the chapters were very short. Not quite on the same level as James Patterson short chapters, but enough so that it was slightly bothersome, and I found myself setting the book down constantly at the end of chapters to check Twitter and Facebook and generally not read.

It should be noted that while this book is part of a series, it doesn’t seem necessary to read the books in order.