For at least the first half, this book is a good three or four stars. Jennie Buchanan is a photographer who has a regular workaday job, but also heads a charity that provides for children in need. When a particular show is vandalised before it opens, complete with a threat to kill her if she doesn't cancel, her ex, Ethan Justice, is the man hired to protect her.
The story starts off great. Suspenseful, a little bit frightening. It's a good time. Jennie has severe issues with her self worth because she got pregnant when she was young and gave up the baby. That stabs at her enough, but she was also shunned by her community and lost her fiancé because of it. Ethan basically became her ex because she either pre-empted his inevitable rejection, or possibly because she convinced herself she didn't deserve him. I'm honestly for both.
It obviously hurts Ethan to see her again, and they have a number of rather frank discussions, as well as the skating-around-it kind. But... okay, something is seriously wrong with Ethan.
Sometimes, when I think a book has done something spectacularly wrong or stupid, I run it by the guys in my D&D group. They are singularly qualified, since they're more inclined to be fair than I am. Their verdict was that it's disturbing and Not Right.
For Jennie, the idea of Ethan finding out about her giving up her baby was terrifying. Understandable. But he already knew. He already knew because after they broke up, he tried to find her. Not just "find" but track her down. He ended up going to her hometown, which was where he found out.
This is so creepy that I dropped the book. And it gets worse.
After they finally talk about it, Jennie is far more afraid of Ethan knowing about her past than she is about the fact that her ex-boyfriend basically stalked her because she broke up with him. Personally, I would have questioned just how/why his agency was employed to take my case at this point.
Anyway, Ethan gets it into his head that Jennie has to meet her child. She refuses, and really, it is her decision--the end. But no. Ethan goes to his brother and tells him to track the kid down. His brother even tells him that this is a horrible idea. And yet he does it anyway.
Ethan bulldozes Jennie into a meeting, without her knowledge and directly against her stated wishes, because he knows better. It's disgusting. The only indication given that the writer has any idea how awful this looks is the brother saying it's a bad idea, and Jennie telling Ethan ONCE that he "had no right." Which he effing didn't.
This destroyed the romance for me. He's a stalker and a controller, and his siblings lecturing Jennie about how she broke his heart made me sick.