Customer Reviews

Safe With A Stranger (Silhouette Romantic Suspense)

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3 star:		(2)
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Courtesy of CK2S Kwips and Kritiques

What will a mother do to protect her child against their biggest enemy... the father?

Clare Chandler was in a bind. Having divorced her Middle Eastern Oil Magnate husband, she has fled to the safety of the US with her son. However, Ramzi, her husband, refuses to relinquish control of his lone male heir and will do anything to track her down. With money and a crucial pending deal between the US government and his country Abu Fujarah on his side, nowhere is safe for Clare and little Jimmy.

Former Army Ranger Josh Ryan has seen a lot of suffering in his life. When his friend and fellow soldier died in battle, Josh spiraled downward into alcohol to ease his pain. Now he's hoping to recover and there's no better place to do that than back home in Texas. When he sees a young woman and her child on the run from two dangerous pursuers, he rushes to her aid.

Now Josh is in deeper than he had ever anticipated and finds himself falling hard for Clare. Clare is coming to care deeply for Josh as well, but knows she will never be safe from Ramzi and can't bear to drag Josh down with her. Little does she know Josh has a secret about his heritage that could turn the tides in this battle for Jimmy... and for their hearts. Can Clare ever really be Safe with a Stranger?

Linda Conrad herself says the focus of this story is on the strength of women, as best depicted in three ways - courage, motherhood, and love - and Clare represents all three in abundance. However, don't let that fool you into thinking that's all this story is about. Josh is given his fair share of attention as well through his own personal struggles. Both Clare and Josh are lost in their own battles and only when they unite forces can they both overcome their fears. Clare is terrified of letting Josh and his family get too close, knowing Ramzi will not hesitate to take down anyone, including Clare herself, standing in his way of taking Jimmy back. Josh cannot allow a relationship to develop with Clare due to the curse cast on his family by his great-grandmother, a practitioner of black magic.

The suspense is very well done as we continue to wonder when Ramzi's men will show up next and how far they will go. There is also the added mystery of the witchcraft Josh's family practices and how that will be used to affect unfolding events. The tension between Clare and Josh absolutely sizzles as they try so hard to resist their mutual attraction. I love how Linda Conrad works that into the story. We don't see our beloved couple giving into their passion at inopportune moments as so often happens in romantic suspense. When they do act on their growing love or one another, we know it will be explosive.

Safe with a Stranger by Linda Conrad has just the right blend of strong characters, pulse-pounding suspense, tortured hero, cruel villains, and a little bit of witchcraft to be a winning combination. This book completely stands on its own yet it also sets the tone for the following books with its ominous feel and hints towards the shadowy underlying story. Safe with a Stranger is also about redemption and characters saving their souls from past dark mistakes, real or imagined.

© Kelley A. Hartsell, May 2008. All rights reserved.

Overall I enjoyed this story. Clare was an admirable heroine, trying to keep her child safe. Just how she'd ended up Wife # 7 (or some such nonsense) of middle eastern royalty was plausible enough ... as was how she'd managed to escape.

Josh was a well-developed character as well. His issues with PTSD and reluctance to get involved with a woman were credible enough on that grounds alone. The whole 'magic/curse' subplot, however, just didn't work for me which is why I only gave it 3 stars. Not that magic ran in their family ... just the whole '3 kids accept great-grandma's curse'. Once you get into the whole 'magic' universe, three magical siblings could have easily engineered a 'kharmic reversal spell' or something to zing the old biddy with her own mojo. Under the right circumstances, magic could have worked. Here ... it fell flat. It felt like a Wikipedia citation of magic because paranormal romance is suddenly now a hot topic. If you want to research magic, speak to a real practitioner of the art.

Ironically... once you finally got a glimpse of great-grandma at the end ... she was intriguing. I won't spoil it, but how great-grandma finally 'helped' was the first 'credible' piece of magic in the story.

I will probably read the other two books in this series, despite the silliness of the magic, because the characters and main plots were basically sound and I'm hoping the author does more research to make the magical underpinnings more sound. Otherwise, the story would have worked better for me with magic totally absent.

-- Safe with a Stranger was a good read. Josh was a great hero and I was immediately drawn into his story - love those tortured heroes. :) One of the more interesting aspects of this title is the heroine is married to the son of Middle-eastern royalty and the justaposition of being a modern American woman on the run from a county that views women as chattel, was a nice touch. While I felt the magic was a little silly and convenient, this won't stop me from reading the other two titles (Jake's siblings) in the series. [..]