WhiskeyintheJar Romance

4.3 stars

“There is no espionage here. No memories. There’s only a man and a woman.”

This was one hot little potato!

The bare bones:  widow who finds out she maybe didn't know her husband as well as she thought, spy seeking revenge for his murdered lover, widow and spy awakening each other's sexual desires, and a dangerous espionage game of cat and mouse. 

The vast majority of this book is sensual, think a step beyond sexy because the emotion between our leads is extremely on point.  For every one scene involving the espionage plot of trying to uncover the identity of the Adder assassins, there are probably three sexy time scenes.  

Now, the romance, sexual tension, and emotion between our leads was amazing and written in such a way I went to go check this author's backlist (more on that in a moment).  However, the middle started to sag for me as it felt like the story stopped progressing, things started to get repetitive, and the search for the assassin identities went on too long. 

Well, kind of, I guess.  I needed a little more story in the middle instead of the jam packed ending that felt severely rushed.  I had the traitorous thought that this might have worked better as a novella with a lot of it trimmed. 

So when I went to search for this author's backlist to read the hell out of it, I discovered this is a pretty new author, only one other book to her name, which happens to be the first in this series.  This is incredibly impressive because of the amazing emotional depth she was able to infuse her characters with but with the overall plot structure I can see some slight growing pains.  Seriously, though how exciting is it to have a new author showcase such talent! If she can keep writing her main couple's relationship in such an incredible was as she did here, then sign me up for all her books.

*Thanks to Caz for the recommendation :)