I had mixed emotions about Acts of Honor. In parts it was good. So good, in fact, that it left me gripping the pages, waiting with baited breath to see what would happen next. In other parts, however, it was convoluted, unrealistic and mired down with too many characters. The good and the bad were often mixed, sometimes within the same page. The result is a book that is inconsistent, although brilliant in areas.

Dr. Sara West, a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder, is sent to a military facility and told that, if she helps five patients there, she may find out the truth about her brother-in-law’s mysterious suicide after a top-secret mission several years ago. Soon, she’s strangely drawn of her patients, a mentally-confused man suffering from amnesia, who attacks her on her first meeting. As she begins to cure this patient whom she has named Joe, she falls reluctantly in love – and finds out more about her brother-in-law’s death than she would have ever imagined.

When it comes to the love between Sara and Joe (whose real name is Jarrod), Acts of Honor truly shines. Even though she is there to help him, it soon becomes apparent that Sara needs Jarrod as much as he needs her. They begin to work in tandem to solve a government mystery, and the sexual tension between them is as taut as a bowstring. It’s also strongly obvious, even after only a few pages, that they’re not just in lust, they’re in love, and Hinze exploits this to the hilt, causing the reader to care about the characters on a very deep level. Even after the book was over, I found myself turning back to the scenes between Sara and Jarrod just to admire a particular descriptive term or turn of phrase. When it comes to tugging at emotions, Hinze is in her element.

Unfortunately, the suspense portion of the novel did not fare as well. I’m not well-versed in military terms and had to turn to my Army Sergeant father for help in understanding the bulk of the novel, which dealt with psychological warfare training. Even after a lengthy conversation with him, I was still in the dark about most of the terminology. Hinze moves the novel along too fast for the uninitiated and important facts are often left behind. In addition, several plot points seem implausible. For example, my father confirmed that not every soldier needs to undergo survival training, although the need for this training is a major plot point. A large chunk of the story also deals with clones of Sara and her family. Then the plot moves on again, never explaining how these clones were created. Weak editing dragged down some areas of the story as well. For example, in one scene, Jarrod removes a straitjacket and grabs Sara in a matter of seconds. I’ve seen a magician remove a straitjacket – it took 30 seconds and he was breathing and sweating heavily from the exertion. No matter how much military training Jarrod had, it seems impossible that he could just shrug in and out of the jacket so quickly. In another scene, Hinze seemingly forgets that Jarrod is jacketed, and he runs his fingers through his hair. These are minor points, but they could have easily been corrected by a good editor.

Too many characters also crowded the plot in several places. Need a question answered? Call the wife of a main character, an obscure army general, another anonymous sergeant, a secretary or a nurse. The cast of extras got confusing very quickly, especially when thrown into the mix of military and medical terminology.

For all its faults, however, I enjoyed the love story in Acts of Honor. The writing is good and, with a little editing and polishing, the entire novel could have easily been a keeper. I’m looking forward to reading more of Hinze’s work.