Forced ImpressionsRating: 3 stars
Buy Link:
Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


Jonah Lander’s promotion to detective doesn’t go well when his first undercover operation is a complete disaster when he busts an undercover Miami-based detective and jeopardizes their sting operation. Two years later, Jonah, unsatisfied with his current position, transfers to Miami and finds himself partnered with none other than the detective whose case he ruined, Rafael Santos.

Jonah finds himself falling for Rafael. For the sake of their partnership, Jonah tries to suppress his feelings and begins dating A.J. Choya, the man who runs the tech department. Unfortunately, Jonah finds that the spark he has with Rafael is stronger than the one he has for A.J.

When a new case requires Rafael and Jonah to go undercover, they find themselves having to become intimate with one another for the job. As the investigation heats up, Rafael and Jonah have to begin to face their feelings for one another.

This is one of those stories that I dread having to review. On the surface, this isn’t a bad story; it just wasn’t what I was expecting. To be fair, I hate stories where one of the main characters goes through nearly the entire story in a relationship with someone else, only to end up with someone entirely different at the end. Throughout ¾ of this book, we had Jonah and A.J. together. Granted, Jonah is fighting the feelings he has for Rafael throughout this whole time, yet the whole time I am reading about this, I am realizing I really don’t like Jonah all that much if he is involved with someone when he has feelings for someone else. I thought this wasn’t really fair to A.J. or to readers. I felt cheated out of a romance between Jonah and Rafael.

Another problem I had was the whole police procedural storyline. For the most part, this reads like a Hollywood TV version of police/detective work rather than anything real life. I found myself rolling my eyes more than once. Then there was the whole issue with Jonah moving to Miami because he was sick of dealing with tourist crimes. I didn’t buy it. Anyone who knows anything about crime knows that Orlando has its fair share of violent crimes. So I was left wondering, what was the real reason he left Orlando? Was it a relationship gone bad? Was it because he never lived down the bungled first assignment? Was it because he was gay and there were problems with his co-workers? I felt like he wasn’t being completely honest as to why he left.

I will admit though, once these two men came together – it was HOT. It seemed as if all that passion they had for fighting with one another exploded the second they were forced together for the sake of the investigation and it blew through like a wildfire! I will say, these were some seriously hot sex scenes. They were so well written that even I started to believe that there was something more between these two than what I had been seeing.

Overall, while this book did get off to a rough start for me, it was quick paced and once Jonah and Rafael were together, I found myself enjoying their story. If you don’t mind stories where one of the characters is in a relationship with someone else for part of the book, this may be the story for you.

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

Wendy sig