Till Death - Book Review

By Becky McGraw

Synopsis

Dave Logan, the owner of Deep Six Security, is stunned when Dallas FBI head, Susan Whitmore, darkens his doorstep accusing him of being the cause of her losing her job, and demanding he hire her. Even as his brain says no way, the Barracuda is a woman nobody can work with, his white-knight complex forces him to offer her a job as his very overqualified temporary secretary.

A wealthy couple who ordered a designer baby which wasn’t delivered contacts Dave for help. To get answers for them, Dave has to get inside an overly-fortified fertility clinic going undercover with Susan as his temporary wife. The situation inside is worse than they imagined, and soon their pretend ‘til death do us part’ could become very real unless the two alpha personalities learn to work together to stay alive.

Review

TILL DEATH is the first book I’ve read from Becky McGraw and I quite enjoyed it. This is a new series, but I did wonder if the characters have appeared in one of her previous series. Just the way some of the characters and events were talked about, it sounded like it had happened before and the author was just giving a quick recap into how everyone came to be where they were.

I’m not sure how old David is, but Susan is 36 years old. She’s super smart (that’s my technical term) and unfortunately for her, has no real social skills. I liked Susan’s character from beginning to end. She starts out quite abrasive, and that’s the opinion everyone has of her, but as the book goes on you see she has her reasons for being that way. A woman has to act tough to make it in a man’s world, yet men can’t stand it when a woman acts like a man, all tough and arrogant. When a man does it, he’s just getting the job done. But when a women does it, she’s a total bitch and everyone hates her. By the end of the book, you see that she’s just another woman who’s been hurt by a man and left broken hearted, but determined to move on.

David is a typical man’s man. While he respects that a woman can do just as good a job as a man, he refuses to hire them in his security firm, believing they’ll distract his rough and tough men from their assignments. Hiring Susan temporarily while he tries to find her another job, it turns out that the biggest distraction she causes is to him. I liked David and he’s definitely an alpha male, both with women and the men that work for him. Like Susan, he’s rude, arrogant and demanding, and you realise that he also doesn’t have very good social skills, so they’re kind of made for each other. His business is his baby, and any spare time and cash is used to keep the business afloat and his men employed.

There were a few things that felt unfinished in this book. Susan hinted at a possible conspiracy regarding the death of her parents, her father in particular, due to a case he was close to closing at the time of his death. I thought perhaps this would be an underlying story arc in the series, but after she thinks it once, it’s never brought up again. If it won’t be used in future stories, I don’t see the point in mentioning it at all. In regards to the surrogacy case, we find out what possibly happened to the mother and baby, but there was no closure for the couple that lost it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It held my attention and I didn’t want to put it down. I flattened my iPad battery and went straight to my iPhone to continue reading. The members of David’s team were funny, diverse and interesting, and I’d love to learn more about them if they get their own books.