ARC Review; Darkest Before Dawn by Maya Banks

Quick Rewind: DBD is about Hancock's rescue of Honor and his subsequent emotional turmoil over being forced to choose between her and what he believes to be the greater good. The source of the conflict is that if Honor is turned over to men who will basically rape her to death, Hancock will have the opportunity to bring down a terrorist organization he has been hunting for years. Hancock, however, slowly falls in love with Honor and is plagued by the choice he has to make to betray her. Honor figures out that Hancock needs to trade her for the greater good and frankly, she agrees that it is for the best. She was truly....honorable, if not a complete idiot, one of those two.

This book could have been good if it was approximately 1/4 of its length. I say this because the entire story is told in 1/4 of the pages actually used on the book. You might be asking what happens in the rest of the book, the answer is simple- nothing. This book truly gives new meaning to the word redundant. The exact same excessively long repetitive dialogue and character introspection occurs in page after page after page after page after page....

At the beginning of the book, things are kind of interesting. Honor is trapped in a medical clinic and has to escape on her own as a white woman in a middle eastern country. The way she succeeds is brilliant and suspenseful and engaging (albeit totally unrealistic). I was excited to see what would happen when Honor encountered Hancock who was searching for her so that he could ransom her to terrorist and thus bring down the terrorist...somehow. What happened was, well nothing. Hancock is impressed by Honor's sense of honor and begins to develop feelings for her. When Honor finally learns that Hancock is not her rescuer she does the strangest thing. I don't want to spoil it but it was really too much for me. No human being is as honorable as Honor was. And for his part, Hancock is supposed to be a brilliant strategist and he makes the stupidest tactical error. From that point on things really get kind of ridiculous and the ending doesn't help at all.

I really wish this book had stuck to the direction it seemed to be heading in the first 100 pages. After that, it just really stopped being very believable or even interesting. Oh and yeah, there's almost no sex so that was a colossal failure too. There isn't much romance in this book, it's more a military action novel. If you like that sort of thing, go ahead and give it a try.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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