When I read the cover blurb for Suspect Lover, it sounded like a fascinating premise. Heroine marries hero after a whirlwind courtship. Things look idyllic – until hero’s business partner dies and hero is the key suspect. The question then becomes, how well did our heroine know her husband anyway? Unfortunately, after a few chapters of trying to get inside the characters’ heads, I have to admit that I ceased to care about halfway through. While the author had an intriguing premise for her story, the tension never felt entirely real.

As the book opens, writer Caroline Sommerville has traveled to California from her home in Virginia to meet Dominic Santos, a successful Silicon Valley businessman she met through an exclusive online matchmaking service. After exchanging a few rather stilted emails, the two decide to meet. When Caroline arrives in California, Dominic is at work and has arranged for an assistant to let her into the house – hardly an auspicious beginning.

Even less heartening are the flashbacks to the emails exchanged between Caroline and Dominic. They consist of short little blurbs that make it clear Dominic devotes his life primarily to his work and that he is treating the plan to find a wife like a business arrangement. Dominic makes this even more clear when he and Caroline meet. Over dinner at his house, he tells her that he isn’t in this for love – but he can give her the child she wants. He also informs Caroline that he chose her because he thought her career would suit her to a quiet life. It’s obvious that he plans to continue his workaholic ways while she and their prospective child go about their lives under his roof.

After this romantic outpouring, Caroline, of course, does what any woman would do: She goes upstairs with Dominic for what sounds like moderately unpleasant sex. After this, they decide to marry. Be still my beating heart. Also, what in the world is this woman thinking?

The two have been married for about a month before Dominic’s business partner is killed. It becomes apparent very quickly that Dominic is a prime suspect, and at this point, Caroline suddenly realizes that she has tied herself to someone she knows very little about. This tension adds an extra element to the relationship and makes things more interesting. Up until this point, the chemistry between the two leads had been decidedly lackluster, and I nearly put the book down several times.

However, once the suspense plot heats up, many revelations about the characters start to come out. The tension between the leads also starts to feel more real, and the reading suddenly became a lot more interesting. The fact that the reader cannot fully tell whether Dominic is innocent adds to this heightened tensions. Even so, the story has its share of eyeroll-inducing moments. In addition, Dominic is so cold and detached at the beginning that his change in attitude toward Caroline doesn’t entirely work. I got very turned off by him at the beginning and, while he changes somewhat over the course of the story, there wasn’t quite enough there to bring me around. He still seemed unattractive, and Caroline still seemed a little too much the doormat for my tastes. I don’t need for my heroines to be kick-ass superwomen, but I do like them to have a certain amount of backbone.

I like to try new authors and plotlines because I often find new ones that work for me. However, Suspect Lover just never felt all that romantic to me. A story like this rises and falls on its characters and the two at the center of this story never had a chemistry that felt believable. While the second half of the book greatly improved things, it was still a somewhat below-average read for me. I enjoy suspense, but would give this one a pass.