GRR Review Material Witness: a Romantic Suspense by L.A. Mondello

Material Witness by L A Mondello started with a rather interesting meet-cute, then shifted to forced proximity and suspense. However, the darkest hour and grand gesture seem to be missing in a romance and instead. replaced with a big shootout ending. Thus, it works as suspense, but not that well as a romance.

Crime novelist Cassie Lang (real name: Juanita Cassandra Alvarez) walked into Rory's Bar in Providence to research being a call girl in a bar to gather some observations for her character sketches, and a cool blue-eyed handsome guy in leather jacket came over to chat... when all hell broke loose. Someone from the outside shot up the entire bar with an automatic weapon, and Cassie seems to be the only witness who can identify the shooter and driver. The handsome hunk turned out to be PPD detective Jake Santos, and dead in the bar was a notorious gang boss and an FBI undercover agent. FBI wants to put Cassie into witness protection, but Cassie only trusts Jake to protect her, and reluctantly FBI agreed. But when unknown assailants attacked the FBI safehouse, prompting Jake and Cassie to flee, there is a mole in FBI, and now no one is safe.

The problem with this novel is, as explained before, Jake and Cassie learning a lot about each other's assumptions, and Cassie finally taking charge of her life taking inspiration from her character "CJ" is cool and all, but the "darkest hour" was too vague, and there really wasn't much of a grand gesture to resolve the situation. The suspense resolution: a huge shootout, in front of a courthouse, was just stupid, as is the sudden revelation.

Frankly, I think the author, Lisa Mondella, using a slightly different name to distinguish this series from her contemporary romances, need to plan her endings a bit better.

Category: Romantic Suspense

Primary Plot: Detective must protect a crime novelist as a witness to a hit on a gang boss, but there's a leak in the law enforcement...

Overall Rating:  3/5