Day and KnightRating: 3 stars
Buy Link:
Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


Dayton (Day) Ingram is focused on his work in the technical department at Scorpion. He speaks several languages and certainly knows his way around technology, yet he longs for a field assignment. When he helps save a stranger from an attack one evening, his superiors take notice. Day’s opportunity comes with a new partner, Knighton, who only goes by the one name of Knight. Day cannot find out anything about his partner, despite several attempts at research.

Knight is rough and closed off. A former Marine, Knight has been spending way too much time drinking after his wife and son died. He has not been in the field for two years and this is his last chance to make a comeback. Their mission is to stop a cyber attack. The men are both closeted for a variety of reasons and, to travel discreetly, the men board a gay cruise where they pose as a couple.

Knight is not at all pleased with being saddled with an inexperienced agent and Day has a hard time with Knight’s lack of communication and prickly demeanor. The tension in air crackles and after a few drinks too many, the men fall into bed together. Now dealing with emotions, the men must rely on and trust each other to succeed with their mission. If they can thwart a terrorist attack, they may just be able to let each other in and have the relationship they have both always wanted.

Day and Knight addresses the start of a personal relationship and a business partnership, as well as an undercover mission. On that note, it succeeds as there is time spent on both the start of a relationship between the men and the mission. Day and Knight don’t like each other from the start but are forced to partner up, and the set up had all the makings of an action-packed story. Unfortunately, neither the personal relationship nor the mission worked particularly well for me.

There is a reasonable amount of back story for both men which did help. Day knows he is gay, but to advance his career he has remained in the closet. Knight has had feelings for men as well, yet with a religious family and an encounter that turned tragic, he has denied those feelings. The encounter he did have was explained in detail; it was a lot to deal with on top of the tragedy with his wife and child and it just seemed to pile more onto his character. Knight has barely been getting by after his family was killed, yet his former partner tells him it’s time to get over it.

Day’s first impression of Knight is not favorable, but when he sees him on the cruise ship, all of a sudden he thinks Knight is toned and gorgeous. There were times where a spark between the characters was present, but most often they were not connecting well for me. Whenever one of them, especially Day, had a thought of wanting a real relationship, he chastised himself for acting like a girl, with the thought that only girls should be interested in relationships. Some of the dialog was not intuitive of the characters and when Knight discusses his time as a Marine, he states that he “adored” his time in the Corps. With other instances of dialog that was out of character, both Day and Knight began to lack credibility.

The mission they are on reads as amateurish. Day and Knight work for a top-level security firm and the men are set to stop a cyber attack that is on a terrorist threat level. It’s just the two of them and there is no supporting evidence given that they are qualified for the mission, especially Day as this is his very first assignment in the field. The mission reads in a dry manner and there is little excitement in the build up as Day spends countless hours listening to chatter. The climax of the mission was not at all believable from almost every angle that was presented and it didn’t work for me even as an over the top, under cover action sequence.

So when we get to the end, here’s the thing. There is no ending, because surprise, it’s the start of a new series and the men have perhaps a moment of happiness. The characters and the mission on this one were not to my liking, but the story offers two men who realize they may not be so different while taking on an undercover mission.

A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.

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