Review: In Too Deep

In Too Deep by Kimberly Kincaid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the series but I found it quite easy to read as a stand-alone.

Luke Slater is a rookie fire-fighter on Engine 17 in the city of Remington. On the side he is also studying to be a paramedic.

Quinn is the second seat in the Remington ambulance attached to Engine 17, when her partner Parker injures his hand and is off duty for a while Luke is rostered as temporary replacement. On pretty much their first call they are kidnapped by members of the Viper gang and forced to look after one of their gang who has been shot by members of a rival gang. Quinn and Luke are eventually released but the leader of the Vipers, Ice, threatens to come after them and their friends and family if they breathe a word of what happened and who they saw.

This is kind of a mash up between romantic –suspense and a flat-out sexy firefighter romance and it didn’t really work that well for me. There was quite a good plot but I did feel at one point that Ice brought everything on himself, if he had just walked away and not tried to frighten Quinn and Luke then things wouldn’t have spiralled. Similarly, although Quinn hid it well she definitely had TSTL tendencies which, given her EMT training appeared rather stupid.

Also, is it the adrenaline? Why do two people who have lusted after each other from afar but remained professional because there is too much at stake suddenly throw caution to the winds when their lives are threatened? Halfway through this tense, gripping thriller we stop for copious amounts of sex over and over again, I get that Quinn and Luke aren’t the detectives and can’t do the investigation themselves but it does seem odd.

Just to pile on the woe, Luke and Quinn both have shitty childhoods and angst-ridden back stories which I don’t think were necessary for the plot. Given the other stuff that was going on I think it could have been dispensed with frankly. Yet Luke apparently is zen enough to help Quinn get over the trauma of being kidnapped and threatened at gun-point 0 he knows just what she needs, yes of course, sex Is always the cure, right?

My only other criticism is that I found the other characters to be fairly indistinguishable. I couldn’t tell if they were cops, detectives or firefighters, grunt or superior officer they were just a morass of names.

I would still give one of this author’s books a try, she wrote some gripping thriller type stuff and maybe it was just the balance in this particular book that I found to be wrong.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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