Eric Bloom, reeling from the news that he may have a life-threatening illness, is sent off to check on a dig his company is funding at Machu Picchu. Eric anticipates a few days in the jungle and some awkward conversation with the nerdy archaeologists. What he doesn’t expect is to meet Dr. Alexis Perry: fiery, sarcastic, smart as a whip, and drop dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, she isn’t fond of him … him at first sight. Also unfortunate? The fact that someone has set their sights on the artifacts at Machu Picchu. And they’re willing to kill to get them.
more
While the story was okay, I gotta say that I saw too many issues to fully enjoy it. It being short was not necessarily one of said issues, but it did contribute both in good and bad ways to romance and plot.
The story started of well enough, introducing Eric and his health issue, his life and the start of the plot for the expedition. It quickly gave a relatable light on his character which drew me in. Then the introduction of Alexis, although not having that same depth, built up to them meeting and the expectations I had of the romance. Here however, the excitement and build up died off a bit for me. I mean, I liked their first meeting, both of them having different expectations of who the other would be and being completely off mark. The attraction between them, and then the tenseness after Alexis hearing and misconstruing his phone call. It all was exciting, but from there on out however, that depth and build up was nowhere to be seen.
The story put so much into repetitive inner dialogues and descriptions of surroundings and architecture and then just completely skipped over interactions between the main characters by saying “we talked all night. We had so much in common”. The dialogues we got to see actually written out was then mostly only about archeology. This pretty much erased all previous depth I had seen and bred two very generic characters with no chemistry between them. The only times I actually could see some sort of emotion or life in them was in the twists in the story that affected their relationship. Even then it was so much back and forth of Alexis mistrust, then liking him that it just gave me backlash.
While I did still like the twists (despite all the back and forth in their relationship) mainly for the drama it brought it sadly also revealed som unrealism that became too glaringly obvious to ignore. Like how an archeologist with no training could take down several guys with no help (who had the advantage of surprise on their side). Twice. And the second time the bad guys even had guns on their side. In general the characters also had a TSTL aura. They ignored danger (even while they said they would take precautions, which they didn’t), missed way too obvious signs, completely blamed the wrong guy while all evidence and suspicion pointed to another. And that was just the tip of the iceberg since this aura also included the bad guys who revealed their plans and led the main character right to the truth.
In many cases I think a longer story could have really helped this plot, since it could have given better room for characterization and in turn a better romance. It also could have made the plot more complex just so the unrealism above either would have disappeared through a better handled plot, or at least not have been so glaringly obvious. At the end of the day however I’m still kind of glad that the story was short, since a lot of these issues are in my experience usually more about the writing rather than the length of the book. For the story having a good start and some qualities I liked I give it three stars.