It’s interesting how one person’s romantic adventure can be another person’s nightmare suck-fest. As I watched the hero and heroine forced to marry, attacked by bandits, captured by terrorists, tortured, stranded in the desert without gas (twice, no less), starving, and hunted, I wondered how this could say “romance” to anyone. Or, perhaps more to the point, how anyone in this circumstances could spare a minute to have sex (or even think about it). Add a sometimes too-hard-around-the-edges hero and a heroine covered from head to toe (per local custom), and you have a book that’s at times well-written but still depressingly un-romantic.

Abigail DiMatteo is the type of person who wants her life to matter. She doesn’t just want to talk about contributing money to a good cause; she wants to be out there on the front lines saving the world. Currently she’s living in a small village in the fictional Arab country of Beharrain, helping orphaned boys learn ways to support themselves. One day a man who calls himself Gerald Thornton shows up at her hut to tell her she’s won a major grant. He informs her that he will be filming a documentary about her work, then promptly falls asleep, spending the night in her hut. Nothing happens, but the local religious leader is shocked, and the two are forced to marry.

Actually, as Abigail will find out later (much later), Gerald is really “Spike,” a government agent who works for a top secret branch of the FBI. Spike manipulated events so Abigail would have to marry him, because he needs her help for an urgent mission. After they return home to the village (which is also after they have been attacked by bandits and forced to wander in the desert for a while), he promptly burns down the hut so they will have to leave the village. He really wants her to travel to a city and hook up with Jamal, her old college acquaintance. The government suspects that Jamal is plotting a major terrorist attack, and the plan is for Gerald/Spike and Abigail to get invited into his home so Gerald/Spike can plant listening devices there. The “getting invited to the home” part goes great; the “planting the listening devices” part, not so much. Before they know it, Abigail and Spike (he’s mentioned his name by now, finally) are in the hands of terrorists, fighting for their lives.

There’s a great deal more that comes after that. It’s not that it’s uninteresting; on the contrary, the author provides many interesting cultural details, and heaven knows Abigail and Spike always have something urgent to do. The problem is that their problems were just too relentlessly depressing for me, and I had a tough time seeing how they could manage to fall in love with everything that was going on. However, there’s a little more to it than that. As I read the book, I kept thinking of authors who made dangerous, urgent situations into excellent backdrops for romance. In particular, Brockmann and Gabaldon came to mind. I think the difficulty was that this particular setting just didn’t work. Maybe it was the torture, or the sandstorms. Perhaps it was the endless desert or the multiple broken ribs. Whatever it was, it just didn’t do it for me.

Part of the problem was that Spike was very hard to like at first. He presented himself as God’s gift to women and was highly annoyed when Abigail appeared immune to his manly charms (she wasn’t, but she was good at hiding her reaction – good for her, I say). The way that he put Abigail’s life in danger repeatedly without bothering to explain what was going on – or get her agreement to be part of the plan – really annoyed me. Fortunately, he did turn over a new leaf after they were both captured, and he seemed genuinely sorry. He treated Abigail with more respect after that.

The book might perhaps read a little better as straight fiction. The writing itself is smooth, and the setting comes across as realistic. Most series romances set in fictional Arab countries feature sheikh heroes – a type I have no interest in. But the author goes beyond stereotypes here. There are both good and bad people in the country. There are terrorists, but there are also kindly people who come to the couple’s rescue, risking their own lives in the process. I do feel compelled to note that the realism of the writing stops completely at the bedroom door. The love scenes are oddly euphemistic and purple, which really makes them clash with the rest of the story.

On the whole, I found the book so fraught with peril that I couldn’t really bring myself to enjoy the love story. But if you are craving a road romance where everything that can go wrong does (including things you haven’t even thought of) this may work a little better for you.