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rmbonds1993's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
winemakerssister's review
3.0
3.5 stars
This has mixed reviews and I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. But it was free from the library and I've read the first two books in the series so I figured I'd give it a try.
There are definitely a number of major decisions/actions by the protagonists that require some serious suspension of disbelief. It's a bit of a Jenga tower of a storyline that's built on blocks that shouldn't exist, but the plot requires those blocks or there would be no story.
The good news is that I was swept up in the suspense enough to enjoy the book without all those dumb decisions and actions pulling me out of the story. But Pamela Clare, you can do better.
This has mixed reviews and I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. But it was free from the library and I've read the first two books in the series so I figured I'd give it a try.
There are definitely a number of major decisions/actions by the protagonists that require some serious suspension of disbelief. It's a bit of a Jenga tower of a storyline that's built on blocks that shouldn't exist, but the plot requires those blocks or there would be no story.
The good news is that I was swept up in the suspense enough to enjoy the book without all those dumb decisions and actions pulling me out of the story. But Pamela Clare, you can do better.
mvbookreviewer's review against another edition
5.0
5++ Stars Romantic Suspense - my favorite in the series so far
I don’t know how she does it but Ms. Clare rocks my world every time with her delectable characters and engrossing storyline. I’ve never experienced a dull moment nor encountered a scene which I had wished would have gone differently since I started on the I-Team series. Its a testament to Ms. Clare’s creativity and talent that each of these stories have wormed their way into my heart, never to be forgotten, to be revisited sometime in the near future. With only one more book from the I-Team series left for me to read, it’s going to be an unbearable wait till July next year when Breaking Point featuring the mouthwatering Jed Hill on its cover comes out.
Marc Hunter or Hunt as he is called by Sophie is a convicted killer serving out his life sentence without eligibility for parole in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Broad shouldered with thick brown hair and deep green eyes, Marc comes from a broken home with a mother who had been a drug addict which had led him to growing up within one foster home or the other. The social service workers had come to take him and his younger half sister Megan away when Marc had just been 10 years old. And to this day, the image of little Megan crying and reluctant to leave her home drives home the guilt that he should have been a better protector for Megan. Marc had managed to clean up his act enough to get a place in the army where he had spent six years of his life becoming a decorated Special Operations sniper and served 18 months in Afghanistan before coming back to Colorado. Seeing that Megan had turned into a drug addict just like their mother cuts Marc up deeper than anything else and he tries to do the right thing by helping her overcome her addiction. With a job at the DEA doing what he can to rid the streets of the drugs that had ruined his family, the life he had created for himself comes crashing down on the afternoon of August 12, 2001. When the walls of the prison closes around him, life becomes undoubtedly that much harder for Marc as the guards hate his guts because he had killed a federal officer whilst the inmates are out for his blood especially those he had helped put behind bars during his time at the DEA. The only thing that keeps him going through the six years in prison is reliving the sweet memory of Sophie or his fairy sprite, the girl who had offered him her virginity on the night he was to leave for the army giving him the most precious and happiest hours of his life.
Sophie Alton had just been 16 years old with a massive crush on Hunt when all her dreams had come true on the night June 9, 1996. Sophie and her brother David had had to move down to Grand Junction, Colorado to live with their maternal grandmother when Sophie’s loving parents had been killed by a drunk driver whilst crossing a road in Denver. With strawberry blond hair, creamy skin and deep blue eyes, Sophie has big dreams of making it as a journalist when Hunt gives her the most unforgettable night of her life beneath the open sky. Though Sophie had dated sparsely throughout the years, every other man pales in comparison to Hunt. 12 years on, Sophie does the prison beat for the Denver Independent’s elite I-team. With her brother David studying to be a horse vet, Sophie saves every penny she can so that she can help David along to achieve his dreams.
Storyline: Sophie had been covering Megan Rawlings, an inmates journey through pregnancy and motherhood for the past couple of months ever since she had covered a piece on the stillbirth of an inmate’s baby which had in turn spurred her on to look more closely into the plight of female prison inmates. Megan had spent 18 hours in labor pains to deliver beautiful baby girl Emily only to give her up to the Social Services. On the day that Megan had earned a 2 hour visit with Emily which Sophie was covering, Megan disappears with Emily in tow leaving a large amount of drugs in her room, a testament to the fact that Megan had once again succumbed back to her addiction which Sophie had been so happy to see that Megan had been overcoming slowly. Since Sophie had grown pretty close to Megan during the months she had spent with her, when Sophie receives an invitation from Megan’s brother in jail, Sophie is more than eager to meet up with him to find out whether he has any information that could lead her to Megan. When Marc walks into the interview room Sophie has no idea of who he is though the very sight of his beautiful Sophie all grown up hits Marc nearly stunning him momentarily. Before Sophie knows it, she is held at gunpoint by Megan’s brother as he flees the four walls of the prison that had been his home for the past 6 years. It is only later on that Megan realizes that Marc Hunter is none other than her Hunt and that Marc had broken out of prison because he feared for Megan and little Emily’s life. It is then Sophie learns of the horrors that Megan had undergone at the Denver Juvenile Detention Centre at the hands of the guards who are sworn to protect the lives of those under them violating the lives of so many women. As Sophie and Marc race against time to find Megan and Emily before the determined and corrupt government officials get their hands on Megan and silence her forever, so does the white hot attraction and feelings between Marc and Sophie escalate which left me breathless -almost all the time! Sigh!
Likes: There is nothing like a hot hero to keep the pages turning and Marc is just the epitome of perfect hero material. With his scars and sexy tattoos and his oh so perfect body its a wonder I made it through the story without continuously drooling from the sides of my mouth. Yes, he is that hot. The thing that always astonishes me with every story I read from Ms. Clare is the fact that her heroines are equally appealing. Most of the time heroines tend to get on my nerves one way or the other but I guess Ms. Clare knows just the right ingredients to make her heroines as appealing as the heroes. I loved the combustive passion between Marc and Sophie which were of the eyebrow singeing type. Ms. Clare delivers on all fronts especially with a much needed against the wall scene and an against the car scene which just made my day! And as always loved revisiting the characters from the previous stories which always makes the next book a plus point in my opinion.
Full review of the book can be found on my blog: http://bit.ly/d1MsTI
I don’t know how she does it but Ms. Clare rocks my world every time with her delectable characters and engrossing storyline. I’ve never experienced a dull moment nor encountered a scene which I had wished would have gone differently since I started on the I-Team series. Its a testament to Ms. Clare’s creativity and talent that each of these stories have wormed their way into my heart, never to be forgotten, to be revisited sometime in the near future. With only one more book from the I-Team series left for me to read, it’s going to be an unbearable wait till July next year when Breaking Point featuring the mouthwatering Jed Hill on its cover comes out.
Marc Hunter or Hunt as he is called by Sophie is a convicted killer serving out his life sentence without eligibility for parole in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Broad shouldered with thick brown hair and deep green eyes, Marc comes from a broken home with a mother who had been a drug addict which had led him to growing up within one foster home or the other. The social service workers had come to take him and his younger half sister Megan away when Marc had just been 10 years old. And to this day, the image of little Megan crying and reluctant to leave her home drives home the guilt that he should have been a better protector for Megan. Marc had managed to clean up his act enough to get a place in the army where he had spent six years of his life becoming a decorated Special Operations sniper and served 18 months in Afghanistan before coming back to Colorado. Seeing that Megan had turned into a drug addict just like their mother cuts Marc up deeper than anything else and he tries to do the right thing by helping her overcome her addiction. With a job at the DEA doing what he can to rid the streets of the drugs that had ruined his family, the life he had created for himself comes crashing down on the afternoon of August 12, 2001. When the walls of the prison closes around him, life becomes undoubtedly that much harder for Marc as the guards hate his guts because he had killed a federal officer whilst the inmates are out for his blood especially those he had helped put behind bars during his time at the DEA. The only thing that keeps him going through the six years in prison is reliving the sweet memory of Sophie or his fairy sprite, the girl who had offered him her virginity on the night he was to leave for the army giving him the most precious and happiest hours of his life.
Sophie Alton had just been 16 years old with a massive crush on Hunt when all her dreams had come true on the night June 9, 1996. Sophie and her brother David had had to move down to Grand Junction, Colorado to live with their maternal grandmother when Sophie’s loving parents had been killed by a drunk driver whilst crossing a road in Denver. With strawberry blond hair, creamy skin and deep blue eyes, Sophie has big dreams of making it as a journalist when Hunt gives her the most unforgettable night of her life beneath the open sky. Though Sophie had dated sparsely throughout the years, every other man pales in comparison to Hunt. 12 years on, Sophie does the prison beat for the Denver Independent’s elite I-team. With her brother David studying to be a horse vet, Sophie saves every penny she can so that she can help David along to achieve his dreams.
Storyline: Sophie had been covering Megan Rawlings, an inmates journey through pregnancy and motherhood for the past couple of months ever since she had covered a piece on the stillbirth of an inmate’s baby which had in turn spurred her on to look more closely into the plight of female prison inmates. Megan had spent 18 hours in labor pains to deliver beautiful baby girl Emily only to give her up to the Social Services. On the day that Megan had earned a 2 hour visit with Emily which Sophie was covering, Megan disappears with Emily in tow leaving a large amount of drugs in her room, a testament to the fact that Megan had once again succumbed back to her addiction which Sophie had been so happy to see that Megan had been overcoming slowly. Since Sophie had grown pretty close to Megan during the months she had spent with her, when Sophie receives an invitation from Megan’s brother in jail, Sophie is more than eager to meet up with him to find out whether he has any information that could lead her to Megan. When Marc walks into the interview room Sophie has no idea of who he is though the very sight of his beautiful Sophie all grown up hits Marc nearly stunning him momentarily. Before Sophie knows it, she is held at gunpoint by Megan’s brother as he flees the four walls of the prison that had been his home for the past 6 years. It is only later on that Megan realizes that Marc Hunter is none other than her Hunt and that Marc had broken out of prison because he feared for Megan and little Emily’s life. It is then Sophie learns of the horrors that Megan had undergone at the Denver Juvenile Detention Centre at the hands of the guards who are sworn to protect the lives of those under them violating the lives of so many women. As Sophie and Marc race against time to find Megan and Emily before the determined and corrupt government officials get their hands on Megan and silence her forever, so does the white hot attraction and feelings between Marc and Sophie escalate which left me breathless -almost all the time! Sigh!
Likes: There is nothing like a hot hero to keep the pages turning and Marc is just the epitome of perfect hero material. With his scars and sexy tattoos and his oh so perfect body its a wonder I made it through the story without continuously drooling from the sides of my mouth. Yes, he is that hot. The thing that always astonishes me with every story I read from Ms. Clare is the fact that her heroines are equally appealing. Most of the time heroines tend to get on my nerves one way or the other but I guess Ms. Clare knows just the right ingredients to make her heroines as appealing as the heroes. I loved the combustive passion between Marc and Sophie which were of the eyebrow singeing type. Ms. Clare delivers on all fronts especially with a much needed against the wall scene and an against the car scene which just made my day! And as always loved revisiting the characters from the previous stories which always makes the next book a plus point in my opinion.
Full review of the book can be found on my blog: http://bit.ly/d1MsTI
acesarrows's review against another edition
5.0
Wow.
What a ride.
This is not a romantic-suspense book for the faint of heart. Parts of the book are raw, brutal and emotional. There were some seriously heart-breaking scenes in this one. The prison experience, the brutality, the hope, the experiences of Sophie, Megan, and especially, Marc....
As soon as I picked it up I could barely stand to read it, even though I couldn't put it down - I wanted Sophie and Marc to have their HEA by the first chapter.
And they did. Eventually. An amazing book.
I still like the first of the I-Team series, [b:Extreme Exposure|159767|Extreme Exposure (I-Team, #1)|Pamela Clare|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290456764s/159767.jpg|154204], the most, but for overall plot, plotting, characters, story and heart-wrenching romance, Unlawful Contact beats it by a landslide.
What a ride.
This is not a romantic-suspense book for the faint of heart. Parts of the book are raw, brutal and emotional. There were some seriously heart-breaking scenes in this one. The prison experience, the brutality, the hope, the experiences of Sophie, Megan, and especially, Marc....
As soon as I picked it up I could barely stand to read it, even though I couldn't put it down - I wanted Sophie and Marc to have their HEA by the first chapter.
And they did. Eventually. An amazing book.
I still like the first of the I-Team series, [b:Extreme Exposure|159767|Extreme Exposure (I-Team, #1)|Pamela Clare|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290456764s/159767.jpg|154204], the most, but for overall plot, plotting, characters, story and heart-wrenching romance, Unlawful Contact beats it by a landslide.
wellactjoally's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This book is prison abolitionist and doesn’t know it. Lots of description of abuse within prison.
Second chance romance. High school romance, yearning. Accidental pregnancy. Wrongly accused.
Rape. Homosexual rape. Casual violence. Abuse of power. Drug abuse. Shitty parents. War.
Second chance romance. High school romance, yearning. Accidental pregnancy. Wrongly accused.
Rape. Homosexual rape. Casual violence. Abuse of power. Drug abuse. Shitty parents. War.
zaza_bdp's review against another edition
5.0
Ce troisième tome de la série I-Team est le genre de livre qui vous attrape brutalement pour ne plus vous lâcher. Pamela Clare est une auteur incroyablement talentueuse car en plus d’une très belle histoire d’amour et de rédemption, elle dresse un bilan effrayant du système carcéral américain.
Comme dans les tomes précédents, on sent la journaliste en elle, la maitrise tellement parfaite de son sujet que les détails donnés sont terrifiants de vérité. Car Pamela Clare dénonce bien ici l’impitoyable système répressif US, où en un clin d’œil, un individu est dépouillé de son identité propre, et même de son humanité. Marc et Megan sont tout simplement broyés par la machine de la justice, et ce dans toutes ses strates. Le fait de voir cela à travers les yeux de Sophie, autant journaliste que femme, amplifie l’effroi que l’on peut ressentir.
Justement, en parlant de Sophie ... La demoiselle est dotée d’un sacré sens du courage, elle se retrouve malgré elle précipitée dans une dangereuse partie de cache-cache où la moindre erreur pourrait être fatale. Elle n’a jamais oublié sa nuit magique avec ce bad boy de Hunt et elle tombe des nues quand elle découvre ce qu’il est devenu 12 ans après. L’amour et la quête de la vérité vont la pousser à aider Hunt, et elle ira bien plus loin que ce qu’elle avait imaginé au départ.
Hunt, lui, est un magnifique personnage torturé, un splendide spécimen d’alpha qui nous montre jusqu’où on peut aller par amour, à quel point on peut se dévouer pour protéger les personnes auxquelles on tient. Ses traumatisantes années en prison l’ont endurci tout en le rendant vulnérable aux choses du quotidien qu’il redécouvre avec un émerveillement quasi-enfantin lors de sa cavale. Lui non plus n’a pas oublié cette nuit magique qui date pourtant de 12 ans en arrière, il reste marqué par ce moment, marqué par Sophie, qu’il a toujours gardé dans un coin de sa tête et de son cœur.
Hunt et Sophie forment un couple magnifique, leur passion est dévorante et déchirante, ils n’ont que le moment présent pour eux. Leur couple m’a vraiment émue, ils sont tellement beaux tous les deux !! En plus Pamela Clare est très douée pour les scènes érotiques, avec ses mots elle parvient à nous faire ressentir la passion brute qui flambe entre les amoureux, le désespoir qui n’est jamais bien loin.
Même si je suis sortie moralement éprouvée par cette lecture (à cause du terrifiant constat du système judiciaire), j’ai vraiment aimé ce livre, j’ai grandement apprécié la plume de l’auteur, très efficace et incisive.
Comme dans les tomes précédents, on sent la journaliste en elle, la maitrise tellement parfaite de son sujet que les détails donnés sont terrifiants de vérité. Car Pamela Clare dénonce bien ici l’impitoyable système répressif US, où en un clin d’œil, un individu est dépouillé de son identité propre, et même de son humanité. Marc et Megan sont tout simplement broyés par la machine de la justice, et ce dans toutes ses strates. Le fait de voir cela à travers les yeux de Sophie, autant journaliste que femme, amplifie l’effroi que l’on peut ressentir.
Justement, en parlant de Sophie ... La demoiselle est dotée d’un sacré sens du courage, elle se retrouve malgré elle précipitée dans une dangereuse partie de cache-cache où la moindre erreur pourrait être fatale. Elle n’a jamais oublié sa nuit magique avec ce bad boy de Hunt et elle tombe des nues quand elle découvre ce qu’il est devenu 12 ans après. L’amour et la quête de la vérité vont la pousser à aider Hunt, et elle ira bien plus loin que ce qu’elle avait imaginé au départ.
Hunt, lui, est un magnifique personnage torturé, un splendide spécimen d’alpha qui nous montre jusqu’où on peut aller par amour, à quel point on peut se dévouer pour protéger les personnes auxquelles on tient. Ses traumatisantes années en prison l’ont endurci tout en le rendant vulnérable aux choses du quotidien qu’il redécouvre avec un émerveillement quasi-enfantin lors de sa cavale. Lui non plus n’a pas oublié cette nuit magique qui date pourtant de 12 ans en arrière, il reste marqué par ce moment, marqué par Sophie, qu’il a toujours gardé dans un coin de sa tête et de son cœur.
Hunt et Sophie forment un couple magnifique, leur passion est dévorante et déchirante, ils n’ont que le moment présent pour eux. Leur couple m’a vraiment émue, ils sont tellement beaux tous les deux !! En plus Pamela Clare est très douée pour les scènes érotiques, avec ses mots elle parvient à nous faire ressentir la passion brute qui flambe entre les amoureux, le désespoir qui n’est jamais bien loin.
Même si je suis sortie moralement éprouvée par cette lecture (à cause du terrifiant constat du système judiciaire), j’ai vraiment aimé ce livre, j’ai grandement apprécié la plume de l’auteur, très efficace et incisive.
jackiehorne's review against another edition
4.0
Reading Pamela Clare is making me wonder if it is possible to write a feminist romantic suspense... Much of the thrill of the genre depends on putting women in danger; to do so, women need to be portrayed as weak in many ways, no?