Review: Hostage to Love

Hostage to Love by Maya Blake

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



For full disclosure, I received this book from publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I knew that we should not fall in love with a book cover but I really liked this book's cover. Actually I loved it enough to request the ARC of this book from the publisher. They were kind enough to give me.

However, the cover turned into one of the major problems I had with this book. Look at it, I think it represented romantic suspense with an adventure in the unknown country, a kind of Rambo romance. But it turned out not to be the case.

I found this book to be a cross between Harlequin Presents book type and romantic suspense but the connection between those two elements were a little bit disconnected.

Belle Winkworth-Jones, a teacher in a war-torn African country was taken hostage by a rebel warlord, who someway somehow fell possessive of her enough to pursue after she was rescued by her Greek billionaire husband. Nick, the husband came to the rescue and took Belle back to his Greek island. He used this opportunity to work out the turbulent relationship that resulted in a 6 months separation.

I thought the first chapter was really interesting. I did not read the blurb so I did not know what to expect and for one minute, I thought Mwana, the villain was actually the hero. So I loved the surprise when the story turned to Nick, the real hero.

The author used the romantic suspense (adventure) plot to drive the characters closer. However, due to several unbelievable storyline or fact as presented in the story. So I thought this story may work better if it only presented as a category romance focus on relationship, not as a romantic suspense as the cover represented. Because whenever I thought about the suspense plot, I had a lot of question marks.

The country in this book, Nawaka in one scene was described as "mostly a French-speaking country" and then in another scene introduced the language Nawakan, which from that point became the main language of communication for the rebel.

Nick had a background as the United State marine, which explained why he involved with Belle's rescue operation. But there was no mention why he chose military career or even why the US when he grown up in Greece and sent to boarding school by his parents. It seemed like his military background was added on for the rescue operation instead of making him only Greek billionaire.

And the villain, as mentioned I quite liked him on the first few page. I liked the depth of his character and like his discussion with Belle about the purpose of her being in his country. It showed me he saw more and wanted more for his country. But after than he turned into a super bad, born to be bad, and do not forget a rapist as well.

Suddenly this rebel leader who in the first few chapter described as being support by his people became so obsessed with Belle. So much that he left his based operation, army, and risked everything to get her back. Why?

Only because he was a villain should not immediately mean he had to be irrational.

That was the reason I thought this story would be working better if focus only on the relationship between Nick and Belle. I actually loved the scene in Greek island when those two tried to reconcile. And if there was no plot involved Nawaka or Mwana, I would love this story much more.





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