Reactivated

Title: Reactivated
Author: Caitlin West
Publisher: eXtasy books
Cover Art:
Amazon Link:
Genre: Erotic Romance, Gay, Thriller
Length: 94 pages (20684 words)
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 rating stars

A Guest Review by Feliz

Summary Review: This was a gripping and really enjoyable read, but one of the main characters remained very pale, and rather than being the opening of a series, this book felt as if half the story was missing.

The Blurb: For every rule, there’s an exception

Ardan Boyle has spent the majority of his life as a freelance assassin. Working throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East, he only accepts contracts for the most vile of criminals, for those who have made themselves ‘above the law’. His success can be measured in the reduction of criminal filth in the Old World but even this service to the world has a price: the total detachment from his humanity.

Enter Brad Myles, an aspiring actor and businessman. Their chance meeting at an airport awakens something Ardan thought long dead and even as they become acquainted, it becomes obvious that maybe there’s a cure for a lifetime of apathy. Nothing comes for free though and while Ardan may be on the road to recovery, his past is not quite so easily shed.

The Review:

As for speed and suspense, this book actually didn’t leave much to be desired for my action-loving reader’s heart.

The main character’s distinctive, catchy narrative voice gripped me from word one. Ardan Boyle, the 1st person POV narrator, is one of the best hitmen money can buy. If he accepts a job, he gets it done, fast and clean by preference but he doesn’t shy away from messy if necessary. He has never been caught since he sticks by a set of rigid rules the most important of which is never to get attached.

Ardan kills with a clean conscience since he only goes for those who had it coming–but still, he remembers each and every one of his victim’s names and his deeds haunt his dreams.  This comes clear through various flashbacks on Ardan’s jobs; these flashbacks at once add to the book’s fast pace with gripping action scenes and help with Ardan’s characterization. (for those who are sensitive to this kind of thing, a little warning: there’s quite a bit of blood and gore in those flashbacks.) Ardan’s solution is having no emotions whatsoever, all he allows himself to feel is various degrees of comfort. Thus his view of the world is almost that of an alien, so without ties is he.

But Ardan has grown tired of feeling nothing, and he has gotten to a point in his life where he’s ready to wake up from his emotional hibernation. And so, when chance and happenstance bring him together with sociable, winsome Brad Myles, Ardan comes out of his shell hell for leather, from loneliest man on earth to full commitment and from asexual to insatiable in a matter of days.

Normally, I’d bristle at that kind of thing but here I could accept it since it totally fit Ardan’s all-or-nothing personality and the frame of mind Ardan was in by the time he met Brad. Though I didn’t miss the fact that Ardan basically latched onto the first person who ever showed him the least bit of human warmth.

The writing was skillful and did its best to paint a three-dimensional picture of Brad, but I could never get a good reading of him. Which was one of the things that bothered me here. Except for being a generally open, friendly and sexually forward guy, I couldn’t see anything in Brad that would make Ardan–who survived on borderline paranoid circumspection and meticulous planning so far, mind you–throw all  caution to the wind like he did.

This book relies heavily, not to say exclusively, on Ardan’s characterization and character development; from his first encounter with Brad onward, the plot in and of itself was sketchy at best. Here, too, the writing was the saving grace, at least for me–it kept me turning pages fast all the way through the rather trite plot twist near the end.

Until the book just stopped.

Just like this. Wham. Left me hanging, not merely from a cliff but right in thin air.

Now I get it that this is the first book in a series, and that it needs to have a handful of loose threads to be knit together in future installments. But this? felt like an excerpt, an appetizer, a really long first chapter with the rest of the book missing, and I couldn’t help feeling as if someone thought me a fat bass they wanted to hook and therefore had to chum.

So, even if I really, really enjoyed the book and inhaled it in one go (which wasn’t taxing at all  thanks to its short length and fast-paced, compelling writing), it left a sour aftertaste with me.

I’d still recommend the book for the sheer enjoyment of it, but consider yourself warned. Right now, I feel like the ride this book took me on was actually a ride I was taken for.

Even though I certainly want to know where the ride is going to go next.