ARC Review: Midnight Revenge by Elle Kennedy

I am a huge fan of Elle Kennedy's after reading the first three books in her Off-Campus series, so when I saw Midnight Revenge I couldn't wait to read it! Though this is the seventh Killer Instincts novel, it is easily read as a standalone. Since I hadn't read the previous books in this series, I was a little worried about jumping in here with book 7, but I didn't have any problems understanding anything. While I did like parts of this book though, I have to admit that this wasn't exactly what I had been expecting from Elle Kennedy, even knowing that it would be different because of the genre.  

Derek "D" Pratt is known as being the most intimidating as well as quietest member of Jim Morgan's mercenaries. He does do emotion or allow anyone to get under his skin. His past is a secret that few know about, and he has been living off grid for years. But when his teammate Sullivan is mistaken for Derek, he knows that he must once again deal with his past in order to rescue his friend. But just when Derek gets a lead on where Sullivan has been taken to, the one-night stand he hasn't been able to forget shows up and complicates the situation further by telling him she is pregnant. Derek finds himself unable to avoid Doc Sofia Amaro any longer when she inserts herself into his mission, but not only will he have to protect her and rescue his friend, he now has to try and keep his and Sofia's unborn child safe as well. 

I had trouble connecting with both D and Sofia here. I felt like we didn't really get to form any kind of connection with D before the action started here, and we didn't know much about him at all. While we did get pieces over the course of the book, there just wasn't much development until the end of the story. By that point it was a little too late to really feel invested for me. Sofia was feisty at times and at other times she came off as naive. It was a bit hard to really get behind her character when I just felt like she was all over the place. I didn't understand her being so dead set on throwing herself into the middle of a dangerous situation in her condition, when she easily could have waited. If that wasn't bad enough, she finds him and tells him and instead of heading home to take care of herself and her unborn child, the knowingly puts herself in even more danger because she is scared for D. It just didn't work, and quite honestly I didn't like her after that. While these two did have chemistry and had some hot moments, I found that those didn't work for me all the time either. They just didn't come off as natural and seemed to be thrown in where I really questioned their timing. 

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with this story and I just didn't think that it worked for the most part. Romantic Suspense is a tricky genre for me, because I need to feel a balance between action, suspense and romance. Unfortunately that was my biggest issues here. There were times that I felt like the romance was forced and I missed the connection between Sofia and D. Part of that I think was the fact that I just didn't feel like anything really developed until the very end and I wasn't attached to them through the majority of this story. I did think that there were moments of greatness here, and surprisingly one of those was the Sullivan/Liam subplot. I found myself more interested on everything those two had going on than I was about Sofia and D. So while I did enjoy parts of this book, it wasn't my favorite Elle Kennedy book. I will check out more in this series though, and I think if you are a fan of romantic suspense or the Killer Instincts series this is one worth giving a chance.

**ARC Provided by Publisher**

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