romantic suspense

Behind Closed Doors is very much a non-typical romance novel! The author dedicates almost as much time to the mystery as she does the development of the leads' relationship. There are highly charged sensual scenes that come close to overshadowing the underlying romance. Yet, if we watch closely, we see both the hero and heroine as highly vulnerable. The book encompasses a great deal of maturing for both leads - especially the hero.

Raine Cameron is looking for her father's killer. She has taken a job with her uncle's company to hopefully find his killer. Seth Mackey is looking for this brother's murderer. He is a surveillance expert and is watching Raine's uncle's company because he believes he will discover the murderer within the company. Thus, we find Seth, on the opening page of the book, spying on Raine and finding himself closed to obsessed with her.

The leads meet early in the book. Seth and Raine are good at keeping secrets from the other. But as their relationship develops they each open gradually and expose the despised vulnerability that lies deep within the other. Seth was a little too mean to warrant Raine's love. Initially, Raine allows herself to be pushed around but gradually we see her becoming more assertive. Nevertheless, there are still times you may roll your eyes and wonder "Why is she allowing this?" The hero certainly takes his time in becoming a nicer person but it is his ruthlessness that carries many of the sensual scenes. These sensual scenes rate about a 4.5 out of 5 (see More About Me for rating guidelines).

If I had a choice, I would rate this book 4.5 stars instead of 5. My reasoning is based entirely on the time dedicated to the growth of Seth and Raine's romantic relationship. Although the murder mystery was somewhat better than you find in most romance novels, it still took too many pages. The couple's relationship had a good base and capacity for growth that is never amply explored.

Overall, certain scenes within the book are too powerful to warrant less than a five star rating. It is certainly one of the spicier books I have read and you definitely have to be a reader that appreciates a type A, dominant male lead. The heroine does knock him off his all-powerful pedestal more than once but he always climbs back up on it. On the whole, this is a fun, entertaining read that I will keep to read again. This author is new and I expect many good books from her in the future. She somehow has developed an intriguing edge in Behind Closed Doors that is difficult to define, but captivating none the less.

"I am not a nice guy and never pretended to be one." Seth Mackey, the surveillance expert tells it straight to his love-interest Raine Cameron. In fact in Shannon McKenna's debut full-length erotic romance novel, the untainted pair are saints compared to the miscreants.

One by which is Raine's uncle Victor Lazar, multimillionaire businessman who harbors a mad passion for collecting murdering weapons from the past. His latest whim takes him to threatening his associate Kurt Novak with a video-clip flashing his heinous murder of a model and his lover and his murder weapon. Novak is also responsible for the death of undercover agent Jesse Cahill, Seth Mackey's brother and thanks to his surveillance expertise, he is able to infiltrate Lazar's corporation as an employed surveillance expert to catch him and Novak red-handed with the help of his allies, the McCloud brothers.

Mistaking Raine as Lazar's mistress, he keeps close tabs on her and the detection edges close to an obsession for voyeurism. Behind Closed Doors he engages in his private fantasy until he meets her in person - and Raine is caught up in a web of sensual passion and animal attraction.

Think the book is sleazy with sex? Absolutely not when Ms. McKenna's passion strips bare her characters' insecurities and vulnerabilites with tragic intimacy. Raine is haunted by dreams the past seventeen years of her father's death; Seth loses the sole kin who offers him love in a cynical environment controlled by his abusive father. It is sensuous erotic passion that shines over the clinical and perverse carnal acts between Lazar and his secretary. Raine and Seth engages in a fierce battle of power-play through sexual connection, offering a refuge for them built with quiet love, isolation and protection.

Ms. McKenna's characters are brutally honest like her overt passionate scenes - and this is what makes them strongly evocative and endearing. It is not a fairy-tale, bed-of-roses romance but a powerful love starkly devastating in its scale through the mistrust, dangerous obsession, voyeurism and frenetic pursuits from Novak's cronies to capture Raine.

There is absorbing and jolting suspense, surveillance research and familial hell in the story. Yet all these is secondary to the tender and poignant love scenes between the oddball couple. Each passionate play is lusciously sexy and steamy - only because of the emotional undercurrents. It is thus advisable to read it behind closed doors - for the erotic scenes sizzle and fog the mirror.

To call this a romance is definitely stretching it, since there really is no courting involved. In fact, the way they meet Seth, the hero of the book, is sort of a pervy stalker/peeper, which is kinda creepy. But wow! are the sex scenes really steamy!

The book is really pretty much built around the multiple sex interludes. And there are a lot, as Seth and Raine do it like rabbits. There's a ridiculous intrigue plot with guns and big bad guys sorta tossed in, but that part is really just stupid. The meat of the book, and McKenna's writing forte, is the sex! Not too dirty, but definitely not tame, she really delivers the sizzle! Lots of positions, but no bondage or kink (other than a little role-playing.) And one indication that this is fiction for women? Seth, the hero, loves giving oral sex, but never asks for any himself. Hah!