At first, it looks as if Nikki Rose has written a book that is
more thriller than romance. Her free-flowing narrative alternates between
points of views, sometimes tense and partly logical, and at other times naive
and immensely erotic. Her book touches upon an issue that has been close to my
heart: trafficking of humans. Witnessing something horrible and then living one’s life
in the prison of a witness protection program is even “more horrible”. A young
woman restarts her life in a new city and her life goes haywire. She finds it
difficult to convey the magnitude of her uncertainties to strangers. And then a
hunky male finds himself watching her across the road from his apartment.
Helplessly drawn in by her attractiveness, he goes on doing what he should NOT,
and things take unpredictable turns. The novel's twists come, fast and
screeching.
[ I sipped the tea which seemed to calm me. In fact, it was
relaxing me a little too much. My body felt too heavy and I leaned back in my
seat.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I just... What kind of tea was that?”
“Oh, this? An herbal blend. Do you like it?”
I stood and the room spun, the floor jerking out from under
my feet.]
This book has Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes type dialogues and action. Will the protagonist become a victim or a victimizer? We don’t know yet—that’s Nikki Rose’s prose style.
As we begin to learn about the character through the prose, we
understand what an identity crisis really is and how one should behave during a
witness protection period. This novel is halfway done before its first reveal,
but it’s worth the wait. Towards the end, plenty of revelations ensue, and as
they pile up, screams, police sirens, fire engines and more, nearly destroy the
character’s possibility of a happy future. Not everything makes a lot of sense,
but the storyline and its characters, along with the author’s timely
inclusion of shocks and surprises, make CROSSING THE LINE an exciting
read.
Sidd Burth
Author of
THE POISON EARRINGS
30 August,
2018
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