ARC Review: Dawn by Aleatha Romig. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dawn by Aleatha Romig

My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

“Night never had the last word. The dawn is always invincible.” ~Hugh B. Brown
The Sparrow web world is covered in darkness, yet the dawn is near.
The dramatic conclusion to the Dangerous Web trilogy is here.
The veil of safety protecting Lorna Murray’s life has been ripped away.
Can Reid Murray convince her that despite the lingering darkness, the sun will rise again?
Dawn

Great story but romance was a bit too over the top!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💚💙💜
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📘📗📕📙
World building: 🌏🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂

The setting: Chicago

The Hero: Reid Murray – works for Sterling Sparrow, who is the Kingpin of the underworld in Chicago. Sparrow also has some legitimate businesses. Reid is the Tech Specialist. He is married to Lorna and has been for 12 years.

The heroine: Lorna Murray – her brother and her husband work for Sparrow, and Lorna is sort of the house manager for the Sparrow building where they live. She cooks, cleans, makes sure they have everything they need, etc..

The Love Story: Reid and Lorna are in love and married. In the first book “Dusk”, Lorna and Sterling’s wife Araneae, were kidnapped, Sterling’s wife was pregnant and returned home much earlier than Lorna, who was badly beaten and near death. In the second book “Dark” she was dealing with PTSD and Reid was trying to help her through it.

The kidnappers got the wrong women, they were trying to kidnap Lorna’s sister in law. Lorna’s brother Mason also works for Sparrow and her sister in law Lauren is working on some sort of memory formula which the kidnappers also were trying to perfect. Though I don’t really understand why since they seem to have the formula working better than Lauren’s. A big part of Lorna’s PTSD, were her memory holes since she was given the formula.

This book seemed to me to be a bit of a crime novel, with different sides working on the same crime. The crime was the abduction of the women but it turns out to be much more than that where seemingly disconnected things are found to be connected. Through most of the book, Mason and Reid are trying to solve the mystery of who took the women and why.

As the guys follow leads and mete out justice, Lorna and Araneae are trying to get their memories back in order to help and also working through the PTSD. The book alternates between these with each pair revealing more of the inner connections and between the memories and the investigation, there is some romance, a bit of steam and way too many over the top declarations of love and adoration between Reid and Lorna.

I found the romance to be boring between the 12 year married couple who both can’t seem to get over how much they cherish each other and their life together. Note this is all in the midst of Lorna remembering her terrible childhood and her kidnapping. I liked the storyline about the PTSD, memory and the guys out searching for justice, but I just wasn’t in to the lovey-dovey romance. Luckily the romantic scenes were few.