TBR Challenge: ‘NAKED EDGE’, by Pamela Clare

The topic of this month is Series (book that's part of a series)

Published: 2010

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Part of a series I-Team #4

My Rating: 2 stars

Series, what series? 

Easy.

Whenever I have to read something and I don’t know what – the I-Team comes to my rescue.

So I didn’t know what to read for this month TBR Challenge. The only series that I’m following nowadays is Clare’s I-Team. Therefore I said, let’s read the next one!

I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read from this series up until today so it looked like a good option.

The heroine of this book is Katherine, another journalist for the Denver Independent. Her father was ‘white’ and her mother Navajo, but she was raised in an Arizonan reservation, under the loving care of her grandmother so she her culture is Navajo. This grandmother of hers gave Katharine all her beliefs and mores.

Therefore, she is a twenty-something years old virgin who is not interested in men until Mr. Right comes around.

The hero of the book, Gabriel Rossiter is as far from Mr. Right as you can think. He is a womanizer, an adrenaline junkie that loves to climb rock without a rope, extreme skiing and those other sports, risking his life because he just doesn’t care.

He saves her life several times and she is attracted to him. He will never marry, and she only wants marriage and children. So it looks like a happy ever after is not in the way.

The suspense plot is about a place called Mesa Butte, where they celebrate certain ceremonies and its land considered sacred by the Native Americans. Someone is killed and there are different attempts to kill Kat and Gabe.

The thing I loved best of this book was the landscape –the snow, the mountains, rock climbing –something I did so many years ago- the survival skills and the courage both of them show even in the worst situations.

But, as a whole, I’d say that this books was only mildly interesting. It had several things that made me disconnect, I couldn’t warm up to the main characters or the plot or the sanctimonious style. In the All About Romance review of this book, they say Had she been practicing Christianity, it could have been considered Inspirational romance. Instead, it touches on her spiritual connection to the Earth and nature around her and her Navajo traditions.

And it’s right, there are a lot of pages dedicated to spirituality and religious beliefs. So yes, it could be like an inspirational romance. I don’t know for sure because I don’t read that genre, I’m not interested in spirituality or religion –any religion– so I found the book increasingly boring. I respect the people who have religious beliefs, of course, but it’s something totally foreign to me, as if they were speaking I language I ignore.

In the end this is the story of a good virgin that rescues and reforms a tortured man. He had a bad experience with one woman so he distrusts all of them, does not believe in love or happy ever afters and have a lot of meaningless sex and practices a lot of risky sport. Sorry, if someone hurt you that does not mean that you are allowed to hurt anybody else.

Kat, on the other hand, is the virtuous virgin. She has her reasons, but I’m not interested in that kind of heroine nowadays.

I guess if I had read this book ten years ago, I could easily have loved it. But I’m reading romance since the 1980s, and my patience with certain tropes is over.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a good book. Only –not for me.

I think this book is great is you are a virgin yourself because it shows you the respect that you deserve, the effort that the man who wants to be with you has to make. It empowers you to not lowing your standards.

But in the end? Not my cup of tea. I hope I have a better connection to the following books in the series.