Customer Reviews

Black Jack

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As the saying goes, when Lora Leigh is good, she is very, very good. When she isn't... well, it's frustrating to say the least. Books such as 'Wild Card', 'Mercury's War', and 'Coyote's Mate', are all fantastic, and are among my favorites. Others however, including 'Bengal's Heart', 'Maverick', and 'Heat Seeker', have left me dissatisfied. The problems that I have those books are ones that I have seen other reviewers repeat; female characters who should be strong and intelligent repeatedly and easily kowtowing to their "alpha" male counterparts; clumsy introduction of series-changing plot devices; and, of course, the repeated use of the phrase "damn you" in every love scene.

Thankfully, none of those problems are present in Black Jack. Travis is strong and protective, but Lilly is fully capable of protecting herself; they function as a team, helping and saving one another. The structure of the Elite Ops organization is introduced fairly smoothly, although more information would have been welcomed. And, with the exception of two short scenes, 'damn you' does not make an appearance.

Unfortunately, the book lacks the deep characterization and plot that I have come to expect from Leigh. We are given little information about Lilly beyond her title and a shallow look at her relationship with her family while she was growing up. We are told even less about Travis. That his wife is responsible for his death alluded to several times, but never explained, and no other background information is forthcoming.

The plot is similarly murky. The characters seem to do little investigative work beyond several short discussions. When revealed, the motives of the criminal were either quite confusing or amazingly shallow. Greed? Insanity? And just how did the terrorist connection come into play? I'm still not sure. In addition, the issue of whether Lilly's memory has or will return, and the subsequent consequences, is quite important, but it was never conclusively addressed. Like another reviewer, I was left wondering at the end whether I had missed something.

From any other author, Black Jack would be a credible effort, and a quick and mindless read for a train or plane ride. From Leigh, who is capable of so much more, I feel like I read the first draft of a book that has a lot of possibility, but a long way to go.


**Note- As some other reviewers have mentioned, I purchased an e-book version of this book, and it came without the 21 page prologue. After contacting the seller (not Amazon, but another major retailer), they immediately sent me a complete version. I also was curious whether it was also missing an epilogue or even chapters within the book that could fill in some holes in the story, but unfortunately it wasn't.

**Also note the short-story `Nighthawk', distributed free by Macmillan publishing is a prequel to this book, but is NOT the prologue which you may be missing.

What can I say? Not worth the money and the declining quality of her work has made me decide to no longer automatically buy her book without a thorough vetting of the contents. Hope she gets back on the right track. Perhaps quality over quantity would be helpful. Don't waste your money!

I have to admit that after the disaster that was "Heatseeker", I wasn't expecting much. Good thing, because in "Black Jack" we have another poorly edited mess of a book with yet another rushed and confusing ending.

Not content with ignoring the rules of English grammar (e.g.; "Myself and Night Hawk's commanders have come up with...", "She felt a wariness about bringing her suspicions to anyone...", and "She leaned a shapely hip against the back of the couch Travis sat in."), Leigh has now turned her attention to British nobility and has re-written the laws of primogeniture. In the real world, Victora/Lilly's brother Jared would inherit the title when their father was killed. However, in Leigh's world, while Victoria/Lilly is "Lady Victoria", her brother isn't "Lord Harrington" or even "Lord Jared" and the uncle/stepfather inherits the title. And don't get me started on the frequent mentions of lunch and tea with the Queen Mother (who, by the way, passed away in early 2002).

But those are just a few the many problems in this book. If edited properly and all the repetitive sections were removed, this would be a 200-page novella instead of a 350-page novel. Frankly, it would have been a much better, much more suspenseful read.

I'm a long-time fan of Lora Leigh, but I've been deeply, deeply disappointed in the past three books I've read "Bengal's Heart", "Heatseeker" and "Black Jack." It's as if she has lost her passion for writing and is now reduced to cranking out substandard pap to meet her contracted deadlines. As a passionate fan of her Breeds series, I've been awaiting Jonas' story for years, but I'm afraid that if that book (to be released in early April) is as bad as the past three, Ms. Leigh and I will be parting ways.

The premise of Black Jack is fairly simple. Travis, the Alpha Male with Elite Ops, and Alpha Female, Lilly/Victoria with Elite Ops 2 have had an attraction ever since Travis becomes her trainer after she dies--that is, goes off a cliff with her father and her body is never found. Flash forward seven or so years and Lilly is once again the object of an attempted assassination. This time she becomes an amnesiac. Most likely permanent memory loss is the result of a missed gunshot to the head.

The characters are really rather flat. You sense the "intimate" scenes are put in by a formula--whoops--fifty pages have passed time for a little nookie. The premise becomes more and more unbelievable. Lilly returns home to mother and stepfather after her absence and with her amnesia. The story is that she has been basically a high class call girl all the missing years. Give us all a break! This is unbelievable and the author makes it totally ludicrous in her attempt to force us to believe it. Furthermore, Ms. Leigh obviously did ZERO research on the English nobility. Mistakes galore. And, the Travis character is really a Lord in a former life. A good man. Yet when he joins Elite Ops he assumes the identity of someone who is the scum of the earth. Doesn't seem to bother anyone that he comes in contact with though. So we have Victoria who supposedly was a high class call girl and Lord whats-his-name who is now Travis Caine, vicious career criminal. Just really stretches believability.

I don't read a lot of Lora Leigh--mainly her Elite Ops series, but I see her name constantly on the romance charts. She is one of the top erotic romance writers in paranormal and alpha romance. I'm sorry, but can't this author afford to hire a proof reader? I am all for a steamy story, but I also like my "steam" surrounded by a credible plot, believable characters (in whatever genre), and good writing. There were so many grammatical mistakes in this book that it was kind of like reading sentences while someone took their fingernails and ran them down a black board. There were also a few typos. For instance (print edition) in the epilogue this is a sentence that even the most novice of proofreaders or editors should have caught: "He had disowned. Her he had been such an important..." (Page 347 bottom paragraph). I mean really--how could a professional proof reader or editor miss this?

Ms. Leigh if you read your reviews--please do us all a favor and do some research into your plots so that making idiotic mistakes like you did with Victoria's stepfather assuming the title (which should have automatically gone to the brother) and please hire a proof reader so that your poor sentence structure, grammatical errors and typos will be corrected. It will make for a much better read. You know you can hire proof readers for a fraction of what you are probably paid per book. It would go a long way towards your retaining some of your readers.

!!!!Spoilers Ahead!!!!!!!




I usually love Lora Leigh books, but this one... Where to start... Well the heroine has amnesia through most of the book and while everyone knows shes in danger no one is willing to tell her why or what shes been doing with her life even the hero. Theres alot of her begging him for information or at least to admit hes on her side and he refuses anything.

A second thing is it repeatedly talks about english upper crust society shipping their children off to be rehabilitated through drugs and shock therapy. Apparently this happened to a relative of the heroine who was 12 yrs old and was being molested. She (Lilly) apparently knew the little girl was being drugged and in this facility for years but apparently could do nothing about it except visit her. Even though for plot reasons she couldnt rescue her relative ( I think it was cousin) she could have at least attempted to shut down the facility. The fatalistic way the characters spoke of this atrocity, like oooh everyone in this society sends their c hildren here for rehabilitation, theres nothing we can do about it... It just seemed really um out of character for top secret operatives? To say the least.

Then lastly theres the intimacy in this one... or lack of it. Usually Lora Leigh is smoking... but this book, I can't describe exactly what it is but the steam is just missing. Its perfunctory at best.

First off, I would like to state that I was expecting this book to be like the rest of Lora's books. I expected the uber-alpha hero who made decisions and lied to his significant other when he thought it was "right" or "too dangerous" or any of the other stupid reasons Lora has given.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. Travis is an uber-alpha hero, BUT, he doesn't make decisions for Lily. He lets her make her own choices and supports them. Yes, they argue about the decisions, but in the end, he respects her decision. Also, Travis never lies to Lily. Through out the entire book, he did his level best to not directly lie to her.

Lily was a strong heroine. She went with her insticts in regard to Travis. She knew something was off and yes, she did have trust issues, but she dealt with them.

The only problem I have with this book is with Travis's new identity. I was getting confused as to how he is able to re-enter society when he is said to have "died". I realized later on that he most likely got plastic surgery like Lily did. I wish Lora would have made that clear in the beginning of the book.

All in all, I enjoyed the book much more than any others in her Elite Ops series. The hero was kind and patient and truly loved the heroine, a strong character in her own right. He never made decisions for her without talking to her about it and if he did do something w/o her knowledge, she usually knew about it the minute it was over (party scene).

This book scared me, in the first chapter when Lilly is `reminded of another man in her life, one before her death' when she looks at Travis I started screaming "GOD NOT another danged Heat Seeker!" The same when Travis talks about the innocence before his death. I was going to cry, really I had read a short story about these two and the thought of the same plot of should be dead, isn't dead, protect me, waaaa, yes let's get together, everything is good, made me looking at the few hundred pages thinking that I had better books to read.

Well I kept reading, hey I did shell out the 8 dollars for it so I was going to read it. I'm of a mixed opinion now. Lilly is certainly better than any of the previous `cough cough' ridiculous female heroines that were pansies (like that GhostWalker reference?) But at the same time I didn't feel the connection like I Did with Wild Card and the early Breed series... I LOVE Tanner's Scheme. I want to know what she plans to do with this series. Lilly is strong and Travis is a good Alpha character with out being overly gruff and protective. At the same time though you had to sort of let the `plot' gloss over your brain and not think about the holes in it too hard. And some of the 'scenes' in the book had me laughing because of the language... I mean really? Really?

Hey I'm a strong dominant personality... yes... but I enjoy some alpha sweeping once in a while, but Lora Leigh sometimes over does it where you just want to strangle the man rather than cuddle with him. Travis is one of the more alright ones. If you're into easy alpha romance and really like her military series this one is better than the last couple, now I really just wish I could rekindle the romance I had with Tanner and Noah....

Lily "died" and became an elite agent known as "Nighthawk." When an attempt on her life results in memory loss and a return to her family (with a significant re-design in her looks), she finds herself drawn to Travis Caine, another elite agent she has worked with in the past. Her family should be celebrating her return to the living, instead they are thinking of shipping her off to an asylum because of her erratic behavior. Meanwhile Travis needs to make sure that her memories do not result in trouble for the mission or he must terminate her. The only problem? He is in love with her.

I wanted to love this book after reading some of her earleir stuff in the "Tempting Seals" series, but this book is so lacking in so many ways. There was plenty of sex, but a recycled storyline and too many redundant couplings, mixed with way too many uninteresting red herrings, a last minute baddie, and a lack of chemistry between the protagonists make this a middle of the road storyline. I never got the sense that the pair were truly in like, let alone love, and if I have to experience another virgin's deflowering...

Leigh really needs to come up with some new plotlines.

Let me say this first : I try not to be hard on books. I'm writing one and I can only imagine how terrible it will feel should I finally get published to read someone savaging the work I've poured my heart and soul into. But sometimes, a book is so bad it needs a warning label like DO NOT READ. This is one of those times.

Black Jack is one of the poorest books I've ever read. The character development is shallow, the plot is ludicrous, it's bloated by about 200 pages and there is a complete lack of interesting antagonists or hell, interesting characters in general. To be fair, Black Jack is pretty much erotic fiction and I know they're not usually books that have great plots. No one watches porn movies for great acting and story lines and no one reads erotic fiction for the great characters and interestingly layered plots. But really, this was crap by even a very low standard.

Here's the plot: Lillie Belle is from an upper class English background and was supposedly killed in a car accident with her MI5 agent father a number of years ago. Since then she is "Night Hawk", a deep undercover agent hired out as a bodyguard to very bad men, masquerading as a prostitute to them (SO.FREAKING.BAD). She's a virgin (of course) and spends a night with "Black Jack" who has a similar tale of undercover woe and then loses her memory in an accident.

Where to start with how stupid this all is? We spent the entire book waiting for Lillie to remember her life before and get away from the family member trying to kill her again. Interspersed are tepid but explicit sex scenes that seem ridiculous and boring, probably because the characters are in love with each other based on nothing. We don't even know who they are, let alone what makes them want each other. Honestly, I don't even know how I finished this book.

Lora Leigh is obviously not English - her characters read like Americans and should have been Americans and not uppercrust Brits. Don't even get me started on her cardboard English characters such as Lillie's bitchy elitist mother and her brother who works with the Queen (words fail me as to how stupid this is). She even makes reference to Lillie knowing the Queen Mother like she's still alive (she died about 7 years ago). Given that the book is only published this year, I assume this is an old work that hasn't been updated prior to being published. Maybe the warning for this book should read "Old author's work published to make an extra buck and stunning in its utter mediocrity."

Not her best in this Elite Ops series - although I wanted it to be good. Very predictable, hardly any dramatic or romantic tension.

Disappointing from Leigh, who usually is far better. It feels like she just got tired of this series and wound it down to the point of "flat".