Wednesday, January 16, 2013

REVIEW: Surrender At Dawn by Laura Griffin

Digital Edition Short Story, Published June 14, 2011
TBR Challenge Review

This is the first month of the 2013 TBR Challenge hosted by Wendy the Super Librarian, encouraging readers to tackle their TBR pile one book at a time. Once again, Wendy created a list of suggested themes for each month, this month's theme being 'We love short shorts!'... short stories, novellas, category romance, etc. I actually read a lot of novellas, but very few stay on my shelf for very long without being read, so I searched the recesses of my virtual bookshelves and found this short story by romantic suspense author Laura Griffin.

Surrender At Dawn by Laura Griffin is a short romantic suspense story about a devoted sister who travels to Thailand in search of her brother who has gone missing while on a journalism assignment. Charlotte Whiteside knows her brother is in danger and arrives in Phuket, Thailand with a wad of cash and the name of an American pilot--John Brenner who she's been told to hire to find her brother on a remote island. The search and rescue of Charlotte's brother is deemed dangerous because it is believed he went to this particular island to interview a dangerous drug lord. John "Jack" Brenner is an ex-US Navy SEAL and just the man to do the job.

Surrender At Dawn is a pretty short story--not really long enough to develop the characters or their relationship as fully as I would have liked. However, for a short story, I think the author did a decent job of creating a suspenseful situation and bringing two characters together with the promise of something more between them. The ending to this story is realistic and suggests at the possibility of a future story between Charlotte and Jack. I hope that's the case, because I would enjoy reading another story in which they meet again.

3 out of 5 stars

I have Snapped by Laura Griffin, the 4th book in the Tracers series in my TBR pile and look forward to reading it.

Have you read any books by this author?


7 comments:

  1. The set up of the story sounds pretty good but it also sounds like something that needs more page time to truly develop. But it sounds like the ending was hopeful and that's always a plus.

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  2. I love Laura Griffin's Tracer books and I'm surprised I somehow missed this digital short, even though it doesn't seem related. I'm going to read it though because I'm OCD that way :)

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  3. Nice review, Christine. I think it's always a challenge for authors to write RS novellas, because there are just so much to tackle that most must make a choice or it fails... and it seems Ms Griffin was smart enough to make a choice and decided to focus on the suspense, which is a good decision given it's RS :)

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  4. You know what, Christine? I've been meaning to read something by Griffin ever since Natalie first recommended her to us a couple of years ago! Maybe I will read this short piece to begin my gloaming. *g* I do have a book in my TBR, but maybe a short story will give me a little push to get started. :)

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  5. Great review! And no, I haven't read anything by this author.

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  6. I liked the review too, Christine!
    I don't have any book by this author to read, but I gave one book by her to a friend in her birthday and she liked it, so perhaps I'll try her too one day.
    ****

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  7. Thanks for checking out my review, everyone. :)

    Phyl I thought you were one of my friends who reads and loves Laura Griffin's books. I think Leslie might, too.

    I plan to read Snapped for the TBR Challenge when RS is the theme.. if not sooner!

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