MIDNIGHT REVENGE is the latest installment in Elle Kennedy's Killer Instincts series. It features Derek "D" Pratt who has been in the shadows until one of his teammates is mistakenly taken, and he needs to go to Mexico to save his friend. The premise of this storyline really intrigued me. It sounded like it would be a fast-paced read filled with action and suspense. However, despite the highly detailed rescue mission scenes Kennedy is able to put into this novel, I think the romance is what stalled this story.

First of all, D's love interest is a doctor who he had a one-night stand with. Sofia is a feisty woman who gets tangled into this dangerous mission. If you've read Kennedy's books before then you're probably aware of the fact that she likes to amp up the hotness level by a hundred degrees. This is fine in certain series and novels, but I find in a Romantic Suspense series like this one, a balance needs to be made between the action and suspense with the romance. I don't think that was the case here. The author places too much emphasis on the erotic, which completely undermines what she has built in terms of the rest of the plot. Hot sex and tension are great but not when it keeps happening at odd times in the story. They just didn't fit.

Kennedy likes to create tension between her characters. She employs both the sexual and the hostile kind and while it can be interesting, when it happens in nearly every book of the series, it starts to lose its sparkle a little bit. We don't get to know much of D before readers are thrown into the action so I didn't feel like I could connect with him. That sort of disconnect from the characters also hindered me from really enjoying the romance as well. As a result, MIDNIGHT REVENGE didn't feel like the most well-rounded book in the series.