Material Witness by Lisa Mondello // Review

She knew he would have taken the bullet for her, with or without a vest. It both filled her heart with love and with colossal fear.

Material Witness by Lisa Mondello

Standalone - Heroes of Providence #1
Release - January 1, 2012
Genre - Romantic Suspense
Primarily Dual POV - 3rd person
Heat Level - 3 out of 5/a couple of barely descriptive scenes
Format/Source - Amazon Kindle purchase
Length - 237 pages
Publisher - Indie

Bestselling crime novelist, Cassie Alvarez, aka Cassie Lang, had murder on her mind when she walked into Rory's Bar under dressed and under cover to research her latest crime novel. Researching the cool, blue-eyed and dashingly handsome man at the end of the bar stirred her senses more than she wanted to admit. But was this man of leather armor all he appeared to be?

Playing White Knight to an innocent wasn't how Detective Jake Santos planned to spend his time under cover. But there was no way "CJ" was what she claimed to be and that nagging tightness in Jake's chest told him he'd better take her home to safety and leave it at that. Then the barroom exploded with gunfire, leaving a trail of dead that includes a notorious Providence crime boss and an undercover FBI agent. When Cassie's name is leaked to the media as the only witness to the grisly murders, Cassie insists she only trusts Jake to protect her.

The FBI wants their star witness happy and will do anything to make sure Cassie testifies. But it is clear to Jake that the shooter isn't the only person who wants Cassie dead. Not knowing who to trust, he vows to protect Cassie at all cost despite the fact that guarding the beautiful novelist is a serious distraction.

I was attracted to the blurb for Material Witness and I have no regrets! I love me some romantic suspense, and while I did find this story to be a bit ridiculous, inaccurate, and predictable, I enjoyed the heck out of this read.

Cassie was a woman who wrote crime fiction for a living and she was pretty good at it... if you chose to neglect the fact that it wasn't wholly accurate or that she naively put herself in dangerous situations in order to research whatever she was writing about. I found her to be a bit deluded when it came to real life as opposed to the fiction she wrote. Who goes into a mob-run bar to conduct research for a fiction novel? Seriously? At least Detective Jake Santos had a reason to be there, seeing as he was undercover. Anyway, her being there ties her whole life up in knots because she's a witness and someone doesn't want to leave her alive.

It was pretty obvious who some of the bad guys were, but I was still caught off guard. I enjoyed the way the story developed and the way the suspense brought the characters closer together. If someone recommended another book from this author for me to read, I'd definitely give it a go!

USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR, Lisa Mondello, has held many jobs in her life but being a published author is the last job she'll ever have. She's not retiring! She blames the creation of the personal computer for her leap into writing novels. Otherwise, she'd still be penning stories with paper and pen.

Visit http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com/ for more information!