4.5 Smooches!
Synopsis
He’s trying to protect his heart…
She’s a shell of the girl she once was…
Can he chase away the demons threatening to destroy her?
Mackenzie Delano craves control. After tragedy strikes during her freshman year of college, she compensates for the helplessness she felt by micro-managing every aspect of her life, from her business life to her social life…to her love life. But she wasn’t expecting to cross paths with a mysterious man who seems to invade her every thought.
Tyler Burnham has been living his life with one rule in mind…never fall in love. Focusing solely on his career, he is able to remain a detached observer of life… Until a case is dropped in his lap, forcing him to form an intimate relationship with a sharp-tongued woman in order to obtain the location of a man deemed an enemy of the State.
When Tyler finds himself falling for Mackenzie, will he be able push his feelings aside and recover the information he needs? Or will he put the mission and their lives at risk to follow his heart?
Chasing The Dragon is the first installment of a two part series of deception and betrayal where nothing is as it seems.
***Note – Chasing The Dragon is the first book in a two-book duet and is a spin-off of T.K. Leigh’s USA Today Best Selling Beautiful Mess series. It is not necessary to have read that series in order to read this duet, but it will contain a mild spoiler from the third book in the Beautiful Mess series, Gorgeous Chaos.***
Review
TK Leigh is a big name around Indie book land and with good reason obviously judging by Chasing the Dragon. Right from the very beginning you are pulled into a mystifying web of intrigue, deceit and danger that takes us from the past into the present where our main protagonist Mackenzie is simply going through the motions in her very well structured and rigid life of all work and no play, or at least a little uncomplicated no-strings play that in no way detracts from her character’s work ethic. Mackenzie without realising it has constructed a self-imposed wall of isolation after having been betrayed in the past, she is slow to trust but very quick to like as a character. Her loyalty and dedication are commendable and the way TK Leigh’s words has created her personality is just so enjoyable to read; even more so is the complicated and chaotic personality of Tyler, the man you know from the beginning is hiding some secrets of his own and is going to blow up the storyline with his own agendas. Tyler is complex and multi-faceted but his entanglement with Mackenzie has its own special variety of problems and complications and right from the start you just want the best for these two diverse and intelligent characters.
‘“You CANNOT FALL for her,” I said under my breath. “This is a job, nothing more.” I ran my hands over my face a I sat on the couch in Mackenzie’s living room, trying to give myself a pep talk. My heart was a traitor. It had shut itself in for years, not feeling anything. Not compassion. Not admiration. Certainly not love. But now it was beating again. Worse, it was feeling again. With one kiss Mackenzie had restarted it, had blasted through the fortress I had built around it.’
TK Leigh is the mistress of suspense here and with the inclusion of some incredibly dramatic and effective conspiracies interwoven with a marvellous and inspiring love story, Chasing the Dragon is a stellar piece of work. You care about the characters, they have superb depth and heart even the supporting characters add more than expected to the overall enjoyment. The storyline is top-notch entertainment with Leigh writing the fragility of Mackenzie’s and Tyler’s fledgling romance with incredible talent. It was hot and steamy when it needed to be and tender and serious when it was warranted, everything was perfectly balanced in my eyes, I just had to knock off a half star for that horrendous cliffhanger because now my impatient bum has to wait for the next book to see what happens next. Not cool TK Leigh, not cool at all.
~Nicole
