Book Review: Guns and the Girl Next Door

Agent Holden Price didn’t have to go far to find his next case—it crashed right into his living room! Not only had the beautiful blonde lost control of her car, but if she was telling the truth, someone was also trying to kill her. As a recovery agent, he had an obligation to investigate. And he couldn’t deny that Mia Landers interested him more than she should.

Nothing made sense to Mia—especially not the attempt on her life.  All she could do was trust Holden, the tall, dark and devastating agent who discovered that he and Mia had a common enemy…and a fierce attraction.  But in order to act on it, they’d first have to come face-to-face with their darkest fears and a deadly revelation that might put their newfound love on the line. 

Guns and the Girl Next Door, by HelenKay Dimon is a Harlequin Intrigue contemporary romance mystery.  It is a part of the Mystery Men series, this being the first of that set that I’ve read.  HelenKay Dimon has written at least one other book in that series, Gunning for Trouble.  Because it’s a part of a larger set of books, there are a lot of details left out about the larger mystery that the “mystery men” are trying to solve.  The reader gets to see Mia’s portion of the mystery solved, but there are a lot of questions left over.  Also, there was a lot of description of Agent Holden Price’s friends, i.e. the other agents, presumbably because each of them has their own love story that dovetails into the larger story, but I felt that having so many characters distracted from the time given to Mia and Holden and their love story.  That said, I really enjoyed this book.  The action was intense and interesting, the descriptions lively and the dialogue humorous and believable.  Although there was a lot of shooting and explosions, things calmed down frequently enough that Mia and Holden were able to spend some time together and move forward in their relationship, although they didn’t get the opportunity to talk about anything more long-term than their present life or death situation.  Mia is snarky and smart, and Holden is a skilled military operative with a secret weakness that only Mia knows about and can help him sort out. 

I will definitely look up HelenKay Dimon’s other books – my main complaint about this one was that the characters just didn’t have enough quality time together, so when they invariably fall in love at the end, it seems a little too early to make a lifechoice like that.  However, given the constraints of belonging to not just a series but one with an overarching plot that takes up a lot of page space, I actually think she did a great job with this and I’m looking forward to reading some of her standalone books.