** spoiler alert ** I'm a bit undecided over what I thought of this book. From one angle, I really enjoyed it, but from another, I thought it was rather lame.

Plot-wise, I liked the book quite a bit. Of Garwood's 6 semi-connected romantic suspense books, this is perhaps my 2nd favorite plot (Heartbreaker being 1st). I do have to qualify that though...the plot idea was good and interesting, but it could have been better developed. There's a lot of down time in this book. There's some action in the beginning, and a short show-down at the end, but the middle lags...people are just sort of going here and there with nothing particularly engaging going on. But it's still an interesting storyline, much more so than some of the plots from the other books. I would have liked to see a more thorough ending. It came off a bit rushed and incomplete to me.

The romance is where this book really lacked for me. Some people won't particularly care about that aspect, but as a romance reader, I love a good romance included in a story. And it just wasn't there in Murder List. For a majority of the book, Regan and Alec either don't know each other, or act like what they are, bodyguard and protectee. They don't even kiss for the first time until about page 315 (of 425 pages). Then suddenly they get together for a bunch of pages. Then nothing until the end when suddenly they're in love and going to get married. It didn't work for me. I could see how Regan was in love with Alec, but not how he fell in love with her (just from a relationship development standpoint). It just could have been done better, in my opinion.

So yeah, I'm of two views of this book. Taking everything into account, it was an average-to-good book for me.