Fortitude Smashed

Fortitude Smashed by Taylor Brooke, 331 pages

Imagine having a clock counting down to the exact moment that you'll meet your soul mate. Now imagine that you're a cop checking out a burglary in progress when your clock hits zero. Surprise! Your soul mate is an art thief! This is exactly what happens to Detective Shannon Wurther, who discovers that his fate is tied to that of bartender/art thief Aiden Maar. While the men are undeniably physically drawn to one another, both have their reservations about the other's lifestyle.

I picked this book up after I found it on a recommendation list, and I swear I thought it was going to be more sci-fi than it was. (Other than the countdown clocks embedded in everyone's thumbnails, there was no sci-fi whatsoever.) Instead, I found a steamy romance with complex characters who are trying to understand this brand new relationship that fate has thrown at them. The book left a lot of things unsaid (like what the deal is with those clocks, and why the soul mates are referred to as "Rose Roads"), and the treatment of the two protagonists was more than a bit uneven (SO MUCH to unpack with Aiden, SO MANY QUESTIONS left unanswered about Shannon). There's supposed to be another book in this series (as evidenced by the "Camellia Clock Cycle Book One" on the cover), but the MLC doesn't own it and I'm not sure whether I want to spend the time to track it down. Meh.