Zero at the Bone

Title: Zero at the Bone

Author: Jane Seville

Rating: 3.5 stars

Genre: Romance, Thriller

Number of Pages: 293

Publisher: Kindle

Publication Date: 2009

Summary: After witnessing a mob hit, surgeon Jack Francisco is put into protective custody to keep him safe until he can testify,

A hitman known only as D is blackmailed into killing Jack, but when he tracks him down, his weary conscience won't allow him to murder an innocent man.

Finding in each other an unlikely ally, Jack and D are soon on the run from shadowy enemies. Forced to work together to survive, the two men forge a bond that ripens into unexpected passion. Jack sees the wounded soul beneath D's cold, detached exterior, and D finds in Jack the person can help him reclaim the man he once was.

As the day of Jack's testimony approaches, he and D find themselves not only fighting for their lives...but also fighting for their future. A future together.

TBR Challenge: For March my TBR challenge was to read a book that was based on a characters emotional development.

Before I begin writing this review I think it would be first a good idea to start off by saying that I spent a good part of February in a reading slump, and as a result, said reading slump may affect my overall perspective and rating on this book.

I picked up this book for two reasons. First I wanted a book that wasn't particularly long, was probably action packed and it met the requirements of my TBR Challenge. When I find myself in a reading slump, I have found that a good way of getting out is to read a book that is fairly short and always has something happening. This book was, however, not quite what I was expecting.

For a book that was about hit men, witness protection and being on the run, this book was pretty lacking in the action. A good half of this book was simply waiting around for something to happen, and then waiting some more. Granted you can't have a book just filled with one fight straight after the other, you need to break them up, but this book was spread out for miles; and when you finally got a fight scene, it was over in a page or two. This would have been fine if something was happening in between but even the romance in the story was very slow due to the fact that D as a character is extraordinarily emotional dead inside.

I really didn't like the character of D. When I say he is emotional dead, I seriously mean it. D might have a moral compass that points north and does direct him in life, but he also lacks the most basic things that makes someone human. A character as emotional dead as D makes him difficult to relate and sympathise with him. This was all especially apparent when you compare him to Jack. Jack was full of life, wanted to know about everything and in comparison to D, Jack was the poster child of humanity.

D took a long time to develop as a character, and even at the end still came across as being quite emotionally dead. It is not until we are well into the second half of this book that we really begin to see him change and begin to live and the epilogue was a good indicator that he hasn't really grown so much as he has grown when it comes to Jack.

My second problem with D was his speech. D spoke like he was highly unintelligent and I really found this hard to accept when he was a man that ran on strategy as a survival mechanism. While I get that the way he talked was probably a way of bringing more depth to D, helping to show that there was more to him. I found myself thinking that Jane Saville was trying to write the worst character possible so she could more easily show that he will grow and develop. But that is just my opinion and based on the high reviews on goodreads I get the impression I stand alone in many of opinions of this book.

Despite the fact that I seem to have only written negative things about the book in this review, I did enjoy the book. The fact that I was in a reading slump and actually finished the book in a couple days shows this pretty well.