Khalia’s father, a famous philanthropist, has just been assassinated in Pakistan due to his contributions to a school for young girls. Khalia decides that the best course of action is to go to Pakistan herself to meet the women who run the school. This requires her to have a full security detail of several retired Navy SEALs, because obviously, the men who killed her father will want to kill her too.
This is the premise of the book. No, I’m not kidding.
What follows is 221 pages of thinly veiled racism and very little plot aside from Pakistani terrorists deciding that Khalia is their #1 target. Oh, and Khalia falling in love with her guard.
I will now present to you a list of questions about this mess of a book:
1. Why do the terrorists care about Khalia? She’s just some random math teacher from the US. Sure, her father built a school for young girls, and the terrorists believe that girls should be uneducated, but really. To devote so many resources and so much manpower to kill a random tourist? It’s so over-the-top.
2. Why is Khalia in Pakistan? There’s no reason for her to be there. Her father was just murdered and she decides, “Oh hey I guess I should see what he was working on that was worth dying for. I might get murdered too so I guess I should hire some ex-SEALs to protect me.” WHAT? Did nobody think to tell this girl, “Hey, Khalia, maybe don’t literally walk into a deathtrap.” No? Ugh.
3. What even is this romance? They’ve known each other for three days when:
You know what? I love you.
Oh, come on. You only think you love him because a bomb exploded next to you and he pushed you out of the way. Like three minutes ago you were saying you didn’t like him and now you’re in love? I can’t.
4. What kind of terrorists are these? This is an actual scene from the book. The terrorists want Khalia to go to a location, but they don’t tell her where. They send her a math problem so she can figure it out. Get it? Because she’s a math teacher?
Khalia enlarged the image again to read them better despite the blur, and gasped a moment later. “It’s trig.” “Huh?” he asked, squinting at the numbers. As in, trigonometry? “And algebra,” she confirmed, sounding convinced. “They’ve given me the distance between two points on the map and the degrees of this angle…” She muttered something else to herself then nodded. “It’s a math problem to calculate the length of this line.” Her finger traced a route from a dot in the middle of the map to the star on the left. Holy shit, it really was trig.
Apparently, the terrorists have nothing better to do.
(Also, can I just comment that the author is Kaylea and the heroine is Khalia? Coincidence? If I write a book, should my heroine be Serah? Because I’m Sara, get it?)
I was so bored by reading this book. It was ridiculous. My Kindle highlights are mostly eye-rolling emojis and, at times, literally just “I DON’T CARE.” There is so much unnecessary information and so little connection to the characters.
I thought I would like this book. I liked the last SEAL book I read. But not this one, and not this author. How this book can possibly have a 4+ star average on Goodreads and Amazon is beyond me. It is not worth your $4.99.
Final rating: ★☆☆☆☆
The Bibliophagist 