Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Patricia D. Eddy’s brand of romance marries the idea of formed families with fractured heroes and heroines. In doing so, it creates stories that feel grave and important. Add to that insta-love romances, and the depth of romance provides a backdrop for her compelling romantic suspense. To read a Patricia D. Eddy romance is to delve deeper into love, into life. It isn’t a light-hearted foray into love; it feels calculatingly necessary for romancelandia.
Eddy’s newest story, Protecting His Target, returns her readers to her popular Away from Keyboard series. We are once again back with the Second Sight folks, specifically Ronan, the loner muscle who found himself shot in Eddy’s Rogue Protector. Ronan struggles to find his place in the Second Sight family and oftentimes waits for Dax, his boss, to relieve him of his duties out of some misguided sense of self wrought by his family of birth. He distances himself from this work family, thinking he’s misunderstood. The heroine of Protecting His Target is Zephyr. Zephyr has been on the run for four years, charged with the assassination of an important governmental employee. At the outset of this book, Zephyr is almost captured by the cartel that used to “own” her. Continually on the run, Zephyr struggles to trust anyone out of self-protection. Ronan crosses paths with Zephyr when he’s tasked with finding her and bringing her to the authorities. When he reads her file, he notices some inconsistencies, and he begins his search with doubts about her guilt. Once he meets Zephyr, he decides she couldn’t be guilty and goes to great lengths to protect her and clear her name. Unfortunately, he tries to do this without his Second Sight team, and he puts Zephyr and himself in danger. Will they lose their lives before they express their love for each other?
I love Eddy’s ability to craft militaristic, romantic suspense. She has this knack for pulling you into that aspect of her stories. Sitting on the edge of your seat, you hope for the best for Eddy’s heroes and heroines, but she doesn’t make it easy on her readers. Instead, as she does with Protecting His Target, she makes it nervewracking. <spoiler alert> Zephyr is captured at some point and tortured, and you find yourself gobbling the story to get to the good part. I love that feeling of need that Eddy creates in her stories.
I also love the idea of formed family. It tethers her stories together whether it’s the Away from Keyboard or Gone Rogue series. It’s important for Eddy to remind readers that we aren’t alone, that we can create our own families when our birth ones let us down. It’s made incredibly clear in this newest book because Zephyr and Ronan are distinctly alone, abused and rejected by their blood-formed families. When they recognize the truth of family created by the Second Sight folks, the emotion of the story grows deeper. Couple that with the chemistry between Zephyr and Ronan, and you can’t help but love this story.
Now, I’ve said this before, and I have to say it again. I’m not the biggest fan of Eddy’s insta-love. I’d love a bit more tension between her heroes and heroines in falling in love. However, I think she does this because the rest of the story can be anxiety-building that she needs a safe landing space for her readers in the predictable love between her couples. I will give her that. However, it does make for formulaic storytelling.
Once again, Patricia D. Eddy’s Protecting His Target reminds you why you can’t help but read her stories. From its well-paced action, its enduring love between the H and h, and the message of the power of family, the pages practically turn themselves to the most happily of ever afters.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 