Contemporary Romance

Rochelle Alers

BET/Arabesque

1-58314-272-X

June 2003

(3) Katika Floyd

PLOT SYNOPSIS: 

The final book in Alers's Hideaway series. Determined to expose a high school drug ring, DEA agent Summer Montgomery goes undercover as a teacher. But her mission is jeopardized by musician Gabriel Cole, whose passion leads her into a dangerous game.

REVIEW: 

Summer Montgomery, an undercover DEA Agent, enters Weir High School as an artist in residence to uncover a high school drug ring. Her new assignment puts her on a collision course with musician and artist in residence Gabriel Cole. Will the passion she finds with Gabriel lead her to fulfill her most secret longings for her future or threaten to blow her cover?

Gabriel and Summer are likeable characters but they are also shrouded in a bit of mystery. You don’t really get the feeling that you know who they are. It is as if you can see just enough of them to understand what motivates them. Oddly, it is the secondary characters that I found the more familiar and interesting characters in the novel. This is most likely because many are members of the Cole family who have appeared in their own books.

As in Ms. Alers’ other novels in the Hideaway Series, she mixes a love story with a bit of action or mystery. Unfortunately, in this book the balance between the two is a bit off. The Prologue starts with an emphasis on Summer and her career as a DEA agent, but this emphasis is laid to the side for most of the story. I think a bit of editing would have helped to better integrate the two plot lines of Gabe and Summer’s developing relationship and Summer’s work on her current case. The lack of integration in the plot lines gives the novel an annoyingly fluctuating pace that is sedate in the beginning and rushed at the end. The diverging plot lines allow you to feel the heat of Gabriel and Summer’s romance but it is somewhat disconnected from the climax of the novel which is more closely related to the subplot of Summer’s job as a DEA agent than to her relationship with Gabriel.

Overall, I would have to say I liked RENEGADE, but I did not love it. More to the point, I didn’t love it like I love the other stories in the Hideaway Series. It just doesn’t integrate the action and suspense with the heat of romance in the way Ms. Alers' earlier books have. Fans of the Hideaway Series, however, will most likely want to read this one, as it is the conclusion of Hideaway Sons and Brothers Trilogy.

katika@romanceincolor.net (31st May 2003)