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.
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.
