Can two rivals work together to solve a case?
When an infant is taken from his carriage in broad daylight, missing persons detective Quaid Valor must race against the clock to find the child and bring him safely home to his family. Unfortunately, Quaid’s partner isn’t available, and his team is spread thin. Begrudgingly, Quaid must accept help from his rival, homicide detective Aslan Doyle, if he wants to get the job done.
Aslan is Quaid’s opposite in every way. He’s bold, outspoken, arrogant, and the office playboy. And much to Quaid’s chagrin, Aslan seems to have set his sights on Quaid as his next conquest.
Quaid doesn’t have time to deal with Aslan’s flirty behavior when he’s trying to solve a case and juggle his cheating ex’s incessant interruptions.
It doesn’t matter how attractive Aslan is or the undeniable chemistry they seem to have. Getting involved with Aslan would be a huge mistake.
But as tension with the case builds, Quaid keeps forgetting he’s supposed to hate this new partner. Maybe Aslan is exactly the kind of distraction he needs.
Temporarily at least.
Right?
**Temporary Partner is the first in the Valor and Doyle Mysteries. Please view any trigger warnings by using the Look Inside feature**
I GOT THIS BOOK ON Kindle unlimited. SPOILERS IN THE REVIEW.
I love m/m mysteries and am always looking for a new one to read so when I saw some reviews for the second book of this series popping up on my feed, I grabbed the first one on Kindle Unlimited to try it out.
Unfortunately it did not quite work for me. Question one, since the book is written from a first person POV which switches between Aslan and Quaid, should not their voices be at least somewhat different?
If I had not see the name of the POV character, I would not have realized that POV character actually just changed and I did not like that at all.
A much bigger problem for me was the fact that I found both of them (but especially Aslan) to be so annoying. Aslan changing his lovers often (he mentions it so often I have to believe him) would not bother me at all (obviously I could guess that if he would get together with Quaid he would stop doing so), but as long as the characters know and agree that they are not going to be monogamous, I don’t mind that.
But what in the name was the sexual harassment he subjected Quaid to ???? I understand that from their meeting a few months ago he would have suspected that Quaid was attracted to him, but they did not see each other, meet or talk at all after that. They are basically strangers at this point. What the actual what was that? Hint to Aslan, that was not an innocent flirting as he seemed to think.
At some point Aslan gets the hint (finally) and kind of stops, but a lot of what he said was when the actual investigation was already underway. I actually cannot agree at all that he behaved professionally right away. At some point, probably, but not right away.
Why did I find Quaid annoying too? I wished he would be honest with himself and kicked his scam of a lover to the curb faster than he did. I fully understand that he was stuck in a cycle, I feel bad for him, it is just my emotional reaction.
Was there anything in the story that I liked? The investigation, I thought it was detailed and well told and I found the conclusion to be very realistic.
It is weird, because I thought it was well told, but at the same time I did not think it was well *written.* The writing as a whole just did not work for me unfortunately and no, I cannot explain why.
Grade C/C-
