Diamond: Double Cross

Title: Diamond: Double Cross
Author: Winnie Jerome
Publisher: Torquere Books
Buy Link:
Genre: M/M paranormal romance
Length: 112 pages
Rating: 2.75 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

Summary Review:
I never really engaged with the heroes in this book and so it fell flat for me.

THE BLURB

Twenty four years ago, naive trainee Randy Hughes lost his heart and virginity to the mysterious Cain. Randy expected to build a life with Cain, but his romantic dreams crashed down after he was abandoned.

Now an undercover paranormal investigator, Randy has the opportunity for revenge when Cain resurfaces. A raid has yielded a strange magical artifact, and Randy’s ex-lover is the only one who has any information. He’s changed in more than a few surprising ways, but Cain still has feelings for Randy, a weakness Randy is ordered to exploit using any means possible. As the case heats up, Randy discovers that emotions he long thought dead are threatening one of the most important assignments of his life.

THE REVIEW

I’ve read and enjoyed a number of Winnie Jerome’s stories so I jumped at the chance to read and review this new book. Unfortunately, for me at least, I just didn’t have very much sympathy with the characters and that, coupled with some other irritations, meant that this was a below average read.

The story begins well with young and impressionable Randy who is a college student. It’s no ordinary college he attends, but one which trains witches and other people with paranormal abilities so that they can join the Institute, an elite group who police and monitor the underbelly of the paranormal world. Randy is also gay and a virgin, a situation he decides to remedy at a New Year’s eve party. He meets Cain and they make sweet love but by the next morning Cain has gone, leaving Randy heartbroken. It was at this point that I began to hear warning bells because I couldn’t understand how Randy could weave dreams of happy every after on the strength of one night of sex. Yes, it was good and romantic sex, but Cain never made any promises and so his complete over-reaction to waking up alone was unrealistic, even for a sweet young guy.

The story then skips forward 24 years and now Randy is a jaded middle aged man who works for the Institute alongside his friend Amelia and her son Jordan. He’s still holding onto all the bitterness of his one night with Cain when he unexpectedly meets Cain again. That in itself didn’t work for me either as much can happen in 24 years and yet he’s still emotionally dominated by a one night stand that happened years ago and unable to let it go. There then follows a fairly contrived situation where Randy is forced to pretend to forgive Cain and start a relationship with him. By this time I’d decided I really didn’t like Randy and when there are further revelations, I didn’t like Cain either. I didn’t believe that they were in love nor did I particularly care by the time I got to the end. In fact they rather deserved each other.

Another reason why this story was a bit of a miss for me was because the paranormal elements were just too conveniently placed with characters suddenly having powers or information when it was necessary to move the plot along or get out of a tricky situation. Perhaps if there had been a little more foreshadowing of the sort of powers these witches possess then I may have found this aspect more realistic. I also found the whole sub-plot involving the skulls a little confusing, especially since all characters are desperate to get hold of information about them but none of them can explain why the skulls are so special. After the huge build up, and all the hurt that the characters suffer as a result, the way the skull was retrieved was anti-climactic. The story ends on a cliff-hanger which presumably is taking us into a sequel.

Another irritation was the way that the story kept jumping ahead in time.  The characters would have a tense scene together and then the scene would end and the next scene would jump ahead a few days or a week or months and all that tension is essentially lost.  The next scene would then begin with a couple of paragraphs telling us what had been going on in Randy’s life which was another failing of the story – too much information dumped on the reader.

I know I’ve been very negative but the story wasn’t all bad. I really liked Amelia, who was a breath of fresh air and offered sensible advice, and her son Jordan was another great character. I also liked the whole paranormal world building with the Institute and their fight to keep the unsavoury paranormals under control.

Unfortunately the rest of the book just didn’t work for me and I can’t really recommend it.  Other readers may find themselves with some sympathy for Randy and Cain, in which case this book may be a more of a positive read than it was for me.