A Light Read of Romantic Suspense

Romance and Suspense may go hand in hand seamlessly in some stories but Landry Yves’ The Things Not Said isn’t one of them.

This is the story of a widow who, before her husband died, was a confident, no nonsense successful businesswoman. Now, after months of grieving and being on the brink of a self-destructive meltdown, Elle or Eliana Tate has stepped back into business trying to save a company her late husband had helped build up.

And she came at the nick of time to prevent a greedy man at a position of power from ruining the company.

But the financial scrummage—the fraud, the contracts, the due diligence—is just one part of the story. Unexpected turns of events keep the story from becoming dull. There is kidnapping, secret government contracts, hidden cameras, clandestine security and the likes, which stand true to the suspense part of the double-genre story.

The romance part: the relationship—or the memory of that—of Eliana and her late husband, Alex, is the crux of the romance in this story. With some non-graphic sex scenes, this story tries to tell the depth of love the couple shared.

The novel takes its sweet time to build up steam, but when the action hits, it is impactful. But there are a lot of clichés. The moment the word ‘government contract’ was mentioned, somewhere in the beginning of the story, you would easily guess one important twist that comes later.

My biggest problem with this novel was the absolute ridiculousness of the plans our villains hatched in the novel. Elle’s financial takedown her nemesis was too easy. Multimillion dollar embezzlements getting unraveled within days of cursory investigation! Hardly supervillain stuff. And then the climactic plan of getting money—makes no sense even to the protagonist! The plots seem plain old stupid.

The novel is well written, but it could have benefitted greatly by leaning one way or another to the romance or suspense sides of the story. The middle ground, as it seemed to me, was not interesting enough.

I would recommend it as a light travel reading.

Book Link: https://amzn.to/3FhXrTC