Review: Trust Me

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Archaeologist Diana Edwards is on a mission to uncover the link between artifact trafficking and terrorism. Just when she’s making progress, she’s kidnapped and forced to work for the very people she’s trying to stop. The nightmare deepens when she discovers the man who arranged her abduction is a terrorist everyone believes to be dead. A team of SEALs is sent in to save her, forcing her to make an impossible choice if she wants to stop looted artifacts from being used to fund brutal attacks across the globe.

Navy SEAL Chris Flyte has one job to do, but the hostage won’t cooperate, endangering him and everyone on his team. After he completes the mission and Diana is safely on American soil, her story of abduction and being forced to dig becomes suspect. But when she shows up on his doorstep saying she’s seen one of her abductors, Chris has to wonder if the archaeologist is lying, or if a terrorist has followed her home.

Genre: romantic suspense / military romance

Publication date: June 2023

Mature content: yes

Review: Trust Me is book two in the Evidence Under Fire series by Rachel Grant. Even though I've read some amazing books by this author before, book one in this series wasn't one of them (you can read my review of Into the Storm here). I still wanted to have a look at book two to see if it improved. 

Unfortunately, while I think there was a lot of potential in the plot, even if it was pretty predictable, Trust Me still didn't fully work for me. Neither character clicked together, to be honest, and I found it very hard to believe that a woman in Diana's place would have sexual fantasies about a man she only saw a glimpse of - in full combat gear, with only his eyes visible - during what had to be one of the most stressful situations in her life. 

But the thing that irked me the most was all the black male, while male, black woman, hispanic, etc that goes on throughout the book. Each time a character is added to the plot, the first image we are given of the person is the race or color of his/her skin. In the same way, the description of Chris' new Seal team is a list of races. Maybe the author is trying to make it clear that racial diversity is well represented in the book. But to me all human beings are equal. Making their race the first characteristic we hear about them seems odd. They are not good looking, nice, smiling, looking sad or whatever. They are black, white or something in between. Pointing it out repeatedly is emphasizing a difference that should not be made. 

Rachel Grant is still in my list of favorite authors, so I will continue to give her books a chance, but for the reasons above I can't bring myself to actively recommend this one.

Happy readings otherwise!

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