Guest Review: Never Say Just – Katie Harper

Haunted by her past of murder for hire and skinning people alive to gather vital intelligence, Kat Boudreaux wants nothing more than to hide away in her sprawling mansion with the love of her life–her daughter. But then Private Gump and his band of Bubbas land on her doorstep. Her brother and his unit of misfit Marines insert themselves with the misguided need to protect her from someone hell-bent on vengeance.
For Shooter, it’s love at first sight, though he wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it. When Kat is nearly fatally injured while saving his life, he knows he’s found the woman for him. Together, they fight side by side to get to the bottom of the threats. Kat’s daughter is kidnapped and this ex-assassin mom reverts back to old habits to save her. Saving Kat and her daughter is easy, taming the shrew that is Hell Kat Boudreaux might meaning losing his favorite appendage.

Series:
Release Date:  June 12, 2012
Publisher:  Decadent Publishing
Source:  Provided by Publisher
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:

Never Say Just is a book that has to grow on you.  I struggled to get through the first part of the book.  The storyline began with a brother returning home from the marines with several of his marine friends to spend the summer with his sister.  Shortly after the brother enters the storyline he sort of disappears and fades into the background.

The female character finds out that their story about visiting for the summer is a ruse and they actually are there to protect her and her daughter from a person bent on revenge because of her previous career as an assassin for a government agency.  How realistic is it that this woman marries a billionaire after a career as an assasin? She decides to play along with her brother and even seduce one of the marines to obtain information.  At this point I felt the plot was too farfetched.  How would one logically jump from meeting the marines and finding out their true intent to deciding to seduce one of them?  This is particularly unbelievable because she was also gang raped, beaten, and cut previous to their visit which is the reason they make her so uncomfortable.

Despite the far fetched plot, much shaking of my head, and the many times when I closed my Kindle and thought I couldn’t go on the characters begin to resonate with me.  One of the marines apparently fell in love with her on first sight, they loved, lost, and came back together.  It was an anti-climatic, predictable happy ending.