Review: Mine to Hold by Cynthia Eden

Mine to Hold is the third book in Cynthia Eden’s Mine series.  This book is about a different couple, Claire and Noah, who met in the second book, Mine to Keep.  I started reading this right after I finished Mine to Keep because I really enjoyed that book a lot.

I loved the suspense and mystery in this story.  Like the other books in this series, the reader is kept guessing the entire time.  By now I’ve learned to stop assuming I know who is guilty because things will change.  I didn’t want to put this book down.  Reading this series reminded me of how much I love a good mystery/crime/suspense story.  With regard to books, mysteries were my first love. That used to be all I read.  In the past few years, I’ve made an effort to read a wider variety of books, and have moved away from exclusively reading mysteries.  But these books brought back the thrill I used to get from reading a suspenseful book.

Also, the book was pretty steamy, so that along with the suspense made for a fun read. 

However, I didn’t find the romance to be all that compelling.  The first meeting between Claire and Noah in New York City – when she goes to him to interview for a job, he informs her that he wants her in his bed.  Yes, they met in Chicago, under some extreme circumstances, but they hardly had a chance to get to know each other.  Maybe he was drawn to her because she was a victim and had been through a lot of horrible things – but that isn’t very romantic.  I usually like more of a build up, a chance to see why the two people fell in love with each other.  With the previous couple – Skye and Trace – they’d known each other for years, so their obsession with each other made sense.  But Noah just sort of decided he wanted Claire.  Maybe I would have been more convinced if he’d fallen for her after he’d gone to bed with her, but for him to be so certain she was the one without knowing her at all seemed odd.  There was never any explanation as to why he wanted her, what it was about her that made her so special to him. 

But as I said in the beginning, I enjoyed the suspense in this story enough that I wasn’t all that bothered by what I considered to be an unconvincing romance.   I still really liked the book and will continue reading any books in this series.  I definitely plan to read more by this author. 

I received a review copy via NetGalley.