Review: Wild Card by Lora Leigh

Title: Wild Card  

Series: Elite Ops #1
Author: Lora Leigh

Published: September 2008

Click on the cover to go to the Goodreads page

It was supposed to be simple. All Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had to do was rescue three young girls from a Colombia drug cartel, then allow himself to be captured just long enough to draw out a government spy. That was before his mission went disastrously wrong…and before his wife, Bella, was told that Nathan was never coming home.

Bella’s mourned her husband’s death for three long years. But she has no idea he’s still alive. Forced to assume a new identity, the man Nathan was is now dead. If he can get back to his wife, can he keep the secret of who he really is…even as desire threatens to consume them? And as danger threatens to tear Bella from Nathan’s arms once more?

Where to start? … Where to start?

This was a completely disappointing book! Seriously! I expected some hot sex, action, some humor, likeable characters and I got a blend of angst and melodrama and idiots. I kid you not, both MCs were cretins.

To help you understand why I’m making those statements, let me tell you about the plot. We have the MCs living happily in a backwards town in Texas, he was a mechanic and a SEAL she was a… I have no idea because it was never said[or I might have missed it]. He was called away to a mission involving a drug cartel, it went horribly wrong: he was tortured, drugged, mind-fucked and every bad thing you can think about… Sabella, the heroine, gets news that he was killed and goes into tailspins of grief for 3 years. Meanwhile Nathan, the hero, was rescued after 19 months of imprisonment and put back together, literally and figuratively. You would expect that any time he might want to ask about his wife or something, well, he doesn’t! He lets her live thinking he’s dead, while he’s co-opted in a shadowy organization by his uncle and getting reports on her[that he doesn’t read, but that’s not important]; he also changes his name since, you know, he’s legally dead and all.

This goes on for years, until he and his unit get a mission in his hometown. Immigrants and the FBI agents sent to investigate are being killed, so they go undercover, Noha aka ex-Nathan working in his own garage, now run by his half brother and his wife. He gets there and it’s lust at first sight. They can’t wait to get into each other’s pants, they don’t talk about birth control or STDs because it would be so un-romantic. They fuck and regret it and keep fucking and not communicating[rhyme unintended].

What drove me insane was the way Noah/Nathan kept saying he still loved her and they were soul mates and every other crap you can think of, but he KEPT LYING TO HER! And the idiot was jealous of her loving her husband and not letting go. WTH is wrong with you?! How can you say you love someone and not want to be with them, especially knowing that they love you back and they kept faithful to you and that they still grieve? Every time he whined about forever or he glared at her for wanting to have a semblance of a normal life I kept yelling “you friggin’ idiot” or “you stupid moron” or “you are such a pea-brained mess” at my e-reader.

Not to say that Sabella aka misspelled Isabella was a paragon of communication. No, she was a mess as well. She was kind of catatonic for 3 years[while he was incarcerated and recovering I guess], then she decided to keep his dream alive: the garage. She kept parts of her hidden, her love of making cars work and her backbone being some examples, from her supposed soul mate, and then wanders why he didn’t come back. She keeps falling into bed with Noah/Nathan and torments herself with thoughts of him no longer loving her and using her and on keeping secrets. But she never decides to talk to the guy! The conversation could have gone like this:

“I know you are my husband, I hate you for never coming back so now I’m divorcing you so you can go on your merry way!”

Or

“You fucking idiot! I know you didn’t die and you never even contacted me you asshole! How could you after promising me forever, and the first time you really need me you decide you’re better to me dead? I want a divorce!”

No, she’s kind of like this:

“Oh you’re so strong and your eyes and jaw and eyebrows remind me of my husband. Let’s fuck.”

I didn’t even like the sex that much! When you think Lora Leigh you expect some great love scenes, but I was disappointed there as well. Everything was so overblown from her honey sweet taste(right *rolls eyes*) to his incredible stamina(coming and still being hard). If I read a SF erotica or a fantasy one, I could have believed it since you can make your own rules there[she could have added a penis as well or something to make things interesting], but this was supposed to be a contemporary, in this world! How can a man be hard indifferently, even when he’s almost bleeding to death? I’ll never know the answer…

All in all I finished this just to know if will get better and to know if I was right about the mole person[I was btw]… As a friend summed it up perfectly:

“a bad porn with lots of angst”

Rating: 

PS:who thought Sabella was a good name? I totally didn’t!

PPS: Sorry for the pic explosion