Glory in Death: Roake is a Nice Guy and Eve Dallas takes lesson from a telenovela villana

On Amazon.

This one took me way longer to get through than the first one. And it's because the main characters spent the entire book, to put it very bluntly, acting like anal sphincters.

The plot is once again standard thriller stuff: an unknown subject is killing successful women in NYC. He (or she) slashes their throat and leaves them in a pool of blood. As any self-respecting fictional serial killer would, they take an item from the scene as a trophy. 

To make matters worse, Eve herself is now a high profile NYC woman, not necessarily because she solved a high profile case involving a sitting US senator last book, but because she is dating mega-gajillionaire Roarke. During the murder investigation, Eve has to utilize her newly found "fame" to bait the killer. 

Nadine Furst, one of the supporting characters that appears almost every book, is introduced this installment. Her introduction consists of Eve calling an off-planet penal colony, where Nadine is presumably doing an exposé regarding future USA's deplorable treatment of criminals. Nadine is career-driven and ambitious, but she isn't willing to take shortcuts to achieve glory. She considers it her duty to report on the truth, and she also admits that not every story needs to be told. (In other words, she's a foil for the killer).

That being said, this is not a book I would recommend. Because Eve and Roarke's relationship troubles makes them behave, as I said above, like entitled children.

The crux of Eve and Dallas' relationship troubles stem from Eve's commitment phobia and Roarke's decision that they are soulmates or something. It seems that Roarke wants Eve to leave her apartment (which he still owns, I assume) and move into his fairy tale castle. Eve, on the other hand, doesn't want to get used to living with Irish Bill Gates because she's certain that he's going to dump her (or she him), and she'll have to go back to living like the little people soon enough.

Oh, and she's also afraid to love or be loved, or something like that. Personally, I think that not wanting to get used to living like a billionaire when you're not a billionaire yourself is pretty reasonable all on its own. I'd be fine with the conflict either way, except for lines like this:

"Roarke, I'm working on it."

"On what?"

"On accepting what you seem to feel for me."

He lifted a brow. "Work harder."

So, he's getting a little bossy. And not just in this isolated incident. This passive aggressiveness keeps getting worse, until it culminates in a nasty fight because Eve doesn't want to accept a humongous diamond Roarke buys for her. When she doesn't react as he expects, he decides to break it off because he's "tired of having [Eve] toss [his] feelings back in [his] face".

It's not even an unfair sentiment. He wants something from Eve that Eve doesn't want/can't give him, so he ends the relationship. My issue is that he breaks it off after throwing a tantrum and declaring himself the victim because Eve. . . isn't playing her part in the epic romance he's dreamed up since meeting her?

When angsting about her refusal to move in with him, his thoughts are. . . let them speak for themselves:

He knew how to outwait a rival, how to outmanuever an opponent. He certainly knew how to fight for what he wanted or intended to have. But he was no longer sure he could outwait, outmanuever, or fight Eve.

My note on that quote is "am I supposed to find this romantic?" Roarke is essentially saying that he's scared he can't wear Eve down into accepting him, which is every Nice Guy's worst fear.

Though it's purely speculation on my part, I can't shake the feeling that Robb expects me to take Roarke's side here. But he's the one being a tool. Eve doesn't owe him anything, especially not for expensive gifts. He's so rich that it doesn't mean anything coming from him anyway. It would be as if I expected a kidney in return every time I gave a homeless person some change.

In all fairness, he also makes some changes in his businesses so Eve doesn't have to deal with dating a man with shady companies, but he doesn't tell her that, which is something she might actually appreciate. So it falls a little flat.

Then, when I think I couldn't be more on Eve's side if Roarke literally started complaining that women never go for Nice Guys like him, Eve loses it. She realizes that she does love Roarke after all. . . so she storms into his house, essentially assaulting the man's butler, to "interrogate" him regarding the book's murder case.

The butler, by the way, is Summerset, another recurring character in the series. Who's described as older, if not exactly elderly. Eve strong arms her way past him, babbling about being a police officer (though she doesn't have a warrant), and then doesn't apologize.

This isn't just rude and potentially illegal, it flies in the face of what Eve has been saying about herself since the first book: "If she wasn't a good cop, she was nothing."

Eve is supposed to be by-the-books when it comes to the law, which is one of the reasons that she and Roarke struggle during the series. So why was it a good idea to have her burst into Roarke's house to yell at him like she's the villain in a soap opera?

I guess because she's the main character, and Robb is counting on me liking her too much to care. But I did care. By this point, I was racing to finish the book because I wanted it to be over, not because I was enjoying myself.