** spoiler alert ** I don't really expect much from romance books. This isn't because I don't think that there can be some fantastic books in the genre (there's some amazing stuff out there), but because the main goal of romance & most fiction isn't to be some amazingly deep read. Their goal is to entertain & only to entertain, which I respect. Unfortunately you sometimes get things that fall short of even that modest goal, which is what happened here with this book.

Normally I'd have a huge paragraph of great things to say about an Adam Harrison related book, but this just isn't the case with this book. While I do like the characters & at times there's some good chemistry, there just wasn't a lot that really stood out here until the ending. I did like the pacing towards the end & it does have a nice little scene at the end as well as some great recipes.

It's just that most of the book felt forced & predictable. Some of the background characters just blurred into one big lump because there wasn't anything to really make them stand out or be exemplary from the rest of the cast. It was also fairly easy to predict the killer because there were only a few people who were described well enough to be the killer & one of those I was able to eliminate because *minor spoiler* one of the team members showed an interest in him *end spoiler*. Even the love scenes didn't really do much to rescue the book because more often than not the chemistry just wasn't present enough to really loop me in like previous books have.

As far as entertainment value goes, I can't muster more than 2 stars for this book. The Heather Graham fangirl in me keeps nagging me to raise the star rating to at least 3 stars, but it's that same fangirl who says "well... I've read a lot better, especially in the AH line of books".

Read this at the library. I wouldn't bother purchasing it unless you absolutely have the urge to keep your collection current.

(ARC provided by Netgalley)