
I can’t help thinking that he would make a most interesting romance hero in his own right.Īs for the romance, well, it’s pretty much like every other story featuring such characters, written by an author who is too concerned about getting me to find her characters acceptable. I am actually fond of Serrano, because he’s easily the smartest and most entertaining goon in the house. The pacing is excellent, the suspenseful scenes get me sitting at the edge of my seat, and the thrilling scenes are very well set up. The storytelling in this story is top notch. Kyra and Mia only demonstrate why you shouldn’t trust two romance novel female characters to come up with a halfway decent plan between the two of them.īut what really saves this story and makes me overlook Kyra’s stupidity is… well, everything else about the story.



Not to mention, she’s driving around in a very recognizable car and waiting for a friend who walks right into the enemy’s clutches. She had stolen from and made a big fool out of someone who is pretty much a mob boss, so she really comes off as dim-witted when she doesn’t suspect Reyes of anything. In fact, not once, until Reyes tells her, does she even suspect that Reyes may be sent by Serrano to kill her. He’d sleep with her, play her partner-in-crime… and fall in love with her.Īs you can tell, I don’t think Kyra is the smartest person around. Therefore, he allows himself to get close to her. Reyes, our hero, is a hitman hired by Serrano to kill her after learning where she has hidden the money. Oh, and did I mention that she’s driving around in a very recognizable car? That is how the hero keeps tracking her, before he manages to place a tracker in that car. Then she takes his money, humiliates him… and spends the next few months running around while leaving the money she has stolen practically untouched. You see, she blames Serrano for the death of his father, and her revenge comes in the form of posing as the woman of his dreams and playing into Serrano’s fantasies until the sucker is madly in love with her.

When the story opens, she is on the run, having fleeced the casino owner Gerard Serrano of a lot of money. However, this works only once on a person. If she touches Michael Phelps, for example, she’d be able to catch up or even beat him in a swimming competition. Kyra Marie Beckwith has an unusual ability – she can touch someone and then automatically gains the ability to perform that person’s strongest ability. The pairing of the hitman with scruples and the con who seeks revenge is a staple of every story that fancies itself a dark and edgy romantic thriller, but such a pairing is so rare in the romance genre that Ava Gray’s Skin Game intrigues me based on the premise alone.
