Guest Review: Red Zone – Sherri Hayes

After a case ended badly for Rebecca Carson, she’s losing her mind sitting around her apartment waiting on her superiors to allow her to return to work. Since she was a teenager, the only thing she’d ever wanted was to join the FBI. Now that dream was in danger.

Gage Daniels has made a pretty good life for himself. A nice house. A career he loves. As a professional football player, he’s used to getting almost everything he’d ever want with just the snap of his fingers. This includes women. A well-timed smile is usually all it takes to attract the opposite sex, especially in Nashville.

When a stalker threatens Gage, the team owner calls an old friend, Rebecca’s ex-partner Travis Hansen, to help protect his star quarterback and find the person responsible. Hansen offers Rebecca the job, and she jumps at the chance. It’s work, and it will get her out of her apartment. How bad can it be?

Posing as Gage’s girlfriend, however, isn’t as easy as it seems. The man is relentless. Rebecca must work to protect Gage while staving off his advances. She’s there to do a job, nothing more. The last thing she wants is to be another notch on a hotshot athlete’s belt.

As the stalker continues to up the ante, Rebecca finds it harder and harder to keep her distance from Nashville’s star quarterback. He isn’t what she expected in one of the city’s most notorious playboys. Now all she has to do is keep him safe until they can find his stalker, and hope she doesn’t lose her heart in the process.

Series:  The Daniels Brothers #2
Release Date:  February 7, 2013
Publisher:  The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House
Source:  NetGalley
Buy the book at:

Reviewer’s Thoughts:

Gage Daniels is a professional football player with a stalker.  Rebecca Carson is an FBI agent currently on leave.  The two are brought together to help solve the mystery of who is stalking/threatening Gage Daniels.

What I loved:
I loved that Gage was really a great guy that had a history of many conquests.  He worked with great patience to overcome Rebecca’s various obstacles to their romance.  He was such a stand-up likable guy.

Gage’s family was absolutely awesome.

What I didn’t like
The author took great pains to really develop Gage’s character.  Then she lets him leave the love of his life while she is still unconscious because of a possible fine?  Isn’t this supposed to be a romance novel where nothing will keep the two apart?  I didn’t get that at all.

I have to be honest here and say that I really didn’t love Rebecca’s character.  She was stiff, straitlaced, passive-aggressive, and prone to create a lot more drama than was necessary.  She had to be prompted by her sister to entertain Gage’s advances.  The least thing caused her to clam up, runaway, and hide in her room or outside.  And she’s an FBI agent? really….. There were just elements of her character that didn’t make sense.  Gage’s character would frequently even request to see her push back more often.  When she did challenge him it didn’t make sense.  He asked her to remove the jacket and open a few buttons on her blouse to appear as if she was an athlete’s girlfriend.  She balked and then promptly did exactly what he asked.  If she was accustomed to going undercover she should have expected to dress and act differently.

Another thing that bothered about the storyline was the lack of details.  There were many elements that would have added depth to the story but were glossed over.  She never full discussed her childhood and the root of her insecurities that made her want to avoid relationships.  The author could have given more detail which would have add much needed rich detail to help support the actions of Rebecca’s character.  Perhaps this would have made her a little less repetitive and annoying. Rebecca and Gage have unprotected sex and literally in 2 weeks she has a result about whether she is pregnant?  It’s possible but not probable couldn’t she have at least waited a month or so?  Sex scenes would have been so much better with greater detail, but they were still steamy.  I would have just wished for so much more.  The story just seemed a little rushed, farfetched, and disjointed.

If you can overlook some minor flaws this book is a good story just be prepared to take deep breaths, roll your eyes, and keep pushing there are enough sex scenes and other plot twists that make this book worthwhile reading.