Ewwww! You Got Romance in My Suspense Novel!

Categories: Romance , Mystery & Suspense , Digital Audiobooks

I was reading an article some time ago in one of those magazines librarians read (Library Journal, Publishers weekly--sorry I can't remember which one!) and was somewhat interested to read about cross-pollination that was occurring between romance and other genres.  I thought it was a good thing at the time, and thought it might be interesting to come across one of these titles, though I wasn't intrigued enough to seek one out.

Now I'm not so sure.  I'll admit, I was frantically grabbing audiobooks in the last few minutes of my lunch break, and therefore missed the rather telling CD cover of Cover of Night by Linda Howard.  So I was a little surprised by the sudden "blossoming of affections" that happened during the bloody beginnings of the siege (by criminals working for the mafia) of a small mountain town.  I was also very surprised at the end when the male lead's close-quarters and semi-premeditated killing of at least one of the criminals was so blithely accepted by the heroine, despite her having young twins.  Altogether, I found the premise of the plot more amusing than suspenseful, and the "happy ending" chillingly odd, which I'm pretty sure is not what the author intended.  I'm sure there are other novels that blend the genres with ease.  This was just the wrong one to encounter first and unawares.