Minder

Title: Minder
Author: Joely Skye
Cover Artist: Lyn Taylor
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Buy Link: Buy Link Minder: Minders, Book 3
Genre: M/M Contemporary Paranormal romance
Length: Novella
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

Summary review: After a promising second book, the third in the Minders series was a little bit of a disappointment.

THE BLURB

The power that brought them together could be the force that destroys them.

Minders, Book 3

Although Josh and Kir have each narrowly escaped the grip of the agency, they haven’t escaped its long, devastating reach. Josh has gone to ground, desperate to keep a lid on an implanted compulsion to kill his lover.

When he learns Kir is in danger, though, he has no choice but to come out of hiding and use every deadly skill at his disposal. Then try to pull away before he unwillingly takes aim at Kir.

Kir is having none of it. Now that he has Josh back in his life, he’s confident his powers as a Minder—and their love—will keep them both safe. But Josh is not the same man who disappeared almost a year ago. The agency has seen to that, and they have a fallback plan to bring Kir back under their control…or see them both dead.

THE REVIEW

Minder follows on from the previous book in the series, Zombie. Josh is in hiding having been given some unexpected help from Trey, who seems to be some sort of double agent working partly for the Agency and partly for his own agenda. Those of you who have read the Northern Shifters series will be very familiar with Trey, who pops up in those books, rather like this one, like a sort of fairy godfather to aid, warn and save the day. In this case he provides all that Josh needs to survive a winter in the wild so that he can stay as far away from Kir as possible. Josh is worried that Brad’s final words, telling him to kill Kir, will lead to Josh killing his lover but when Trey appears again to tell Josh that Kir is in danger, he risks his own fears in order to save Kir’s life.

Whilst it was nice to see this series wrapped up and the characters no longer in danger, well on their way to their deserved HEA, I found this in general to be quite a frustrating book. For a start, quite a lot happens off page because we are to be in the head of the person who is doing the dullest thing at the time. For example, the first part of the book tells of Josh and his mundane winter spent in the wild, whilst Kir is being romanced by a crazy guy who wants to kill him. The more exciting storyline is with Kir, but we are just told about that second hand until the moment when Josh saves him.  This leads to some  gaps in the plot with questions that were never fully answered.

In the previous book, I found the tension between Josh and Kir added a forward thrust to the narrative. In this book the complication is cleared up quickly and rather anti-climatically, leaving the time that Kir and Josh spend in hiding (again – this was a bit of a recurring theme in the series as a whole) with very little tension. Whilst I liked the characters who are two decent, nice guys, when the tension in their relationship is removed they were a little dull, and so the hiding part lagged a bit for me.

The story picked up towards the end with more revelations about just how evil the agency is, plus the appearance of a new character in Josh’s brother – who rather conveniently is a hot shot lawyer who can make things happen to the bad guys. I liked the part with Kir back under the agency’s control as it added some much needed tension and forward thrust to the story but it was all over too quickly.

I’ve enjoyed this series as a whole, and was glad to have caught up with some of the gaps I had with this author’s work. However, overall I think her Northern Shifters and Wolf Town series are a better read overall than the Minders series but it’s still worth reading these books to get some knowledge of where Trey fits into the overall world of the three series as well as showing how the Minders work and to see it in true, rather chilling action.