Friday, March 09, 2007

Chosen Prey, Review for Romance Divas


Chosen Prey by Cheyenne McCray

St. Martin’s Paperback, March 2007

Lyra Collins has been running for five years. Running from a man, Neal, who is the head of a cult called the Temple of Light. They believe that Lyra is the chosen one who will produce the new Messiah. She is supposed to become Neal’s new First Wife. She is determined to never let that happen.

Dare Lancaster is the PI that unwittingly leads The People, members of the cult, straight to Lyra’s door. An ex-cop, who watched his partner murdered years before, he is determined to make it right by Lyra. To protect her now that he’d broken her cover. The fact that he finds her hot and irresistible only adds to that determination.

Will Lyra trust Dare to protect her when nothing has ever stopped The People before? Will she ever be able to stop running or will Neal find her no matter where she goes?

I was very excited when I read the blurb for this book as it sounded really good and right up my alley. Chosen Prey starts off right in the midst of the action which was a good hook, but seemed rather sudden. I found the head hopping, which started after the first couple of scenes, very disconcerting and spent a lot of time being pulled out of the story trying to figure out who’s point-of-view I was reading. In fact, it was like this throughout the book. There would be scenes and chapters where there was no head-hopping at all and then all of a sudden there it was. Now this is something that might be taken care of in final edits, I’m not sure, but usually at that point they are just fixing grammatical errors.

While the story was definitely action-packed, and the plot interesting, I just didn’t feel the connection between Dare and Lyra. It just seemed to me that if she was so scared and on the run from this cult she wouldn’t trust him and/or feel the sexual feelings she had for him so quickly. Maybe I’m just cynical but I felt there needed to be much more of a trust build up. Even though she ran away from him she sat in a car with him, alone, and went to his house, alone, even though she really had no idea who he was. He was just “the man” or “the cowboy” – why would she trust him after all she went through when she lived at the commune? Plus, I found it odd that, after establishing their interest in each other, Lyra went on and on about how hot Nick, Dare’s partner, was. I get mentioning it because that’s reality but I don’t think it needed mentioning more than once. I almost started thinking there was a ménage a trois going to happen. Add to that the fact that Lyra was a virgin who sustained some pretty harsh sexual/emotional abuse at the hands of the cult and I just can’t see her being up to the level of sexual interaction that is provided in this book.

There were some parts of the book where I found I was quite gripped by the tale, especially the interaction between Neal and his people, as well as between Neal and Lyra. Unfortunately, the rest didn’t connect for me.

I give this 3 kisses.

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posted by Michelle @ 9:30 a.m. Comments: 0