The Book Gourmet

Lieutenant Tom Paoletti is in trouble. His recent head injury has resulted in spells of dizziness and obvious paranoia, since he’s been seeing a dead terrorist all over Baldwin’s Ridge. Which makes no sense whatsoever. Then there’s his great-uncle’s best friend who’s dying from cancer, and the man’s daughter, who, even after sixteen years, still makes Tom’s heart go pitter-pat.


I got the ARC for latest in this series from NetGalley, and I decided, OCD person that I am, to read the entire series, which has been on my TBR pile for ages, first.

And I must say, I was rather disappointed by how it all turned out. The prologue was great. Action-packed, humor-packed, intensity skyrocketing...And then it all slowed down too much for my liking. The mystery/suspense sub-plot about the terrorist and maybe him being just a figment of Tom’s paranoia, was good, but it was resolved a tad too quickly and nicely in the end, while being pushed to the sidelines too often in the middle by the two side-stories; war-torn France (which provided an answer to two old men bickering, but also slowed everything down even more) and the romance between Tom’s niece and her geeky, graphic-novelist college student (which was dull and slowed the story flow down almost to a stop).

The romance between Tom and Kelly had much to be desired as well, since I didn’t really buy the I-love-you thing. They had the friends deal down pat, they could’ve even pulled off the friends-with-benefits ploy if it wasn’t for the pesky need of a romance.

Too much redundancy, too slow, too uneventful. Let’s see what the next one brings.