Hot Secrets: Tall, Dark and Deadly Book 1 (Tall, Dark and Deadly, #1)

by Lisa Renee Jones

Royce Walker, a former FBI Agent, who's opened a private security firm with his brothers, has always had the hots for the prim, proper Assistant District Attorney, but considered her hand's off because of a family connection. However, when danger threatens Lauren, he isn't willing to stand by and watch her get hurt. Now the passion for survival is only rivaled by the passion burning between them. And that passion, might just be the death of them both.

• ISBN10: 0985817038
• ISBN13: 9780985817039
• Publish Date: 8 March 2012
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Out of Print: 3 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Lisa R. Jones
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

Hot Secrets is a take it or leave it kind of romance for me. I didn't dislike it, but I can't really say that I did like it either. I read it, it's over, and now I'll be moving on. It started out well enough. Lauren is an attorney who is about to take on a very public trial. She just wants to get justice for the victim's family, but the media is portraying her as a heartless monster. She's also receiving mysterious phone calls, threats, and some physical harm. Then she meets Royce, who takes it upon himself to be her personal bodyguard until all of this is over. However, he's not being truthful about how he first came into this job, but he doesn't want her to push him away and put herself into more danger. Plus, he falls in love with her.

It's a pretty typical romance set up, which was fine. But Hot Secrets just didn't grab my attention fully once things started rolling. Lauren is too goody-goody for my liking despite her fierce courtroom presence. She also straight up refused to see the threats for what they were: threats! She brushed them off as nothing until...well until the end. But then it's all wrapped up super fast. In the meantime, there's some romance. It was alright. Royce is an alpha male out to protect his woman. The one thing that really did bother me though was the dialogue. It's pretty cheesy and too much "baby this," "baby that," "baby please." More editing was also needed, since the punctuation is most nonexistent which gets confusing at points.

In the end, Hot Secrets was okay. There was a pretty good mystery plot, and a pretty good romance. It was a quick, if not wholly engaging read, which will probably work for others, but not for me.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Linda]

*I received a free ARC of Hot Secrets from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

A quick, hot read, but a little weak on the character development. This and all my other reviews are originally posted on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews

[nitzan_schwarz]

2.5 stars
I will start with the good - I rather enjoyed the "thriller" bits of this. Jones made a good work at confusing us and making sure we didn't know who the culprit is until the end. But I kind of wish the stalking would've been more intense. It seems to me like the culprit had it in him to do a lot worse, weird as that sounds.
I just can't bring myself to forgive insta-love anymore. The amount of time I sighed and rolled my eyes because of the irrationality and impossibly quick love these two developed was staggering. It's like... one moment they don't know each other, and therefore are not in love, the next they meet and BOOM - it's love. I can somewhat stand it if it's not stage front, but here it was.
Not to mention that both pissed me off in the relationship. Royce kept important information from Lauren, under the pretense she'll push him away. I think that's stupid. He should've been honest with her from the beginning, or at the very least stop talking about it and the impending doom it will bring to their relationship every few seconds. Plus, some moment I thought I should call the cops at him. That was nearly rape, there!
Then Lauren. The guy tells her she's beautiful, that he's never felt anything like it before, that he wants to be with her. How much more can he say before you understand he loves you? Also, listen to your guts.

[leelu92]

Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Pretty solid story and characters for me.... no complaints! Moving on to book 2.

[Amanda]

3.5

This was mainly a character and romance driven book, so the lack of suspense never bothered me (at least until the very end and I realized virtually nothing in the case had progressed until IT happened).

I liked the developing relationship with Royce and Lauren, and I liked that we got an introduction to the Walker brothers. I was definitely right to pick up the second book when I had the chance.

Hot Secrets was a free Kindle book I downloaded on August 24, 2012 for the Why Buy the Cow? challenge.