Review: Pure Dynamite by Lauren Bach

Author - Lauren Bach
Genre - Romantic Suspense
Series - N/A
Format - Paperback (352p.)
Rating - 3/5 stars

His Mission: High Risk
FBI Special Agent Adam Duval is deep undercover with one mission: gain the trust of his cellmate, Lyle McEdwin, one of the notorious McEdwin family, by staging a prison break with him. Lyle promises they can hide out with his family in their secluded bunker, and that's just the opportunity Adam's been looking for—until it all goes wrong. Lyle is injured in a shootout with an off-duty cop, and Adam has no choice but to kidnap Dr. Renata Curtis from her clinic in order to keep Lyle alive…

Her Life: In Danger
Eluding the police, the trio reaches the compound, where it's clear the McEdwins want Renata dead. She can identify them and their top-secret location. As Lyle grows more unstable by the hour, Adam faces his toughest mission yet: how to protect Renata without giving himself away to the rest of the McEdwin clan. But a much bigger game is in play, and Adam is the only one who can stop a network of domestic terrorists from executing their deadly plot…

• Review •
PURE DYNAMITE was an okay, enjoyable read. Some of my issues I had were with the pacing that tended to slow way down in some points. Almost making it impossible to continue, because at those points I was dying of boredom. For 2/3's of the book the pacing tended to fluctuate enough where when it would pick up, I'd get my hopes up thinking things were going to finally, finally, get interesting. It doesn't though, unfortunately. At least not until the final third. Then things really pick up and start getting interesting. It almost had me questioning if I was reading the same book!

Another issue I had was with the characters. I hated Renata and all the little TSTL moments she had. And she had some doozies, such as trying to stab an armed man with a scalpel with another armed man around the corner, or jumping out of a 2-story window or the big one; climbing in and buckling her seat belt in a car that has a gas leak and a fire after the accident. Really? Really?! I also didn't care for Adam, who's name happens to change at the end of the book (really hate when that happens). I just couldn't really buy into his reasoning behind keeping Renata in the dark about who/what he really is. As for the romance between the two, I didn't believe it. There wasn't much tension there for me. It came off as just a case of Stockholm Syndrome and nothing more.

The saving graces were the suspense plot and dialog. Both were done very well. The suspense was great at the end and had the pacing off the charts it was so fast, if only it had been like that the whole book! But that is what made PURE DYNAMITE enjoyable for me. The plot worked very well. Overall, while the book was okay, I'm happy that I'm done with it.

★★★