Free (707 Freedom #1)

I actually didn’t mind the plot for this story, but the follow through had a few problems with it. Shane and Lily were best friends as they were both from wealthy families they despised. He joins the military and after seeing her on time off, kisses her and that’s the last she sees of him for over a decade. Unbeknownst to Lily, Shane has joined a elite team and has to fake his own death so that he can have a new identity that is isolated from his former life, keeping Lily safe. During this time, he has a lot of dalliances with other women and she goes to his gravestone every year to cry and talk to the presumably deceased Shane about her life. Lily is divorced from her cheating husband that her family set her up with and has used her squillions of dollars to start and work for a charity in Shane’s name that helps the community in a multitude of wonderful ways. Shane creeps into the cemetery every year and watches her from a distance. One day, Lily’s life is threatened by people after Shane. He’s there (of course!), saves her, then tries to pass her off so he can continue to be a military bad boy.

I’ll be honest – this didn’t endear Shane to me at all. He was a jerk and completely inconsiderate to the fact that she had been his best friend, loved him and then been convinced by deception that he was dead. In fact, I’d go as far to say he became a moody, arrogant douche at times. I wasn’t a huge fan of Lily, either. She was pretty whiney and the author had her character harp on about Shane, his death, her love for him, her charity, etc. a lot. Personally, I would’ve wanted to slap Shane around a bit, regardless of how devastatingly good looking he apparently is.

By chapter three, the themes in the book and Lily’s melancholy thoughts and pining for Shane were sounding like a broken record. When she finally comes face to face with Shane, he says everything is a secret…and then tells her why he had to fake his death anyway. That was after they got it on in the car after rushing away from the cemetery. There were a stack of tears rolling and pouring down Lily’s face throughout the book. I really dislike it when authors lean on this cliche for their female leads. We get it. She’s tremendously upset and now probably really dehydrated from crying so much. Sheesh. I think they try to give the impression of a damsel in distress who needs her man, but it hardly ever comes across as this, especially when the crying is shoved down our throats. And Shane’s excuse? He wanted her happy. In Lily’s words: ‘Well, guess what? You failed’.

Of course, amongst all of this angst from Shane serving his country, being a super hero and lying to Lily, they are so attracted to each other that they have to get intimate. This had me rolling my eyes. Shane also trotted out the ‘I’m a soulless killer but I did it to serve my country’ rubbish so that he sounded like a cool, alpha, super soldier. Again, this was over the top. The same themes were repeated throughout the book and by the end of it, I felt like I’d read the same thing quite a few times.

The book wasn’t my cup of tea for the most part, but I got it for free, otherwise I probably would have rated it lower. If you like over the top military romances, you’ll enjoy this, but unfortunately I couldn’t get into the characters enough to enjoy the story, especially with the repetition.