Title: Four Seconds to Lose Series: Ten Tiny Breaths #3
Author: K.A. Tucker
Published: November 4, 2013
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 345
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Owning a strip club isn’t the fantasy most guys expect it to be. With long hours, a staff with enough issues to keep a psych ward in business, and the police regularly on his case, twenty-nine-year-old Cain is starting to second guess his unspoken mission to save the women he employs. And then blond, brown-eyed Charlie Rourke walks through his door, and things get really complicated. Cain abides by a strict “no sleeping with the staff” rule. But being around Charlie challenges Cain’s self-control... and it’s been a long time since any woman has done that.
Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Rourke needs a lot of money, really fast, in order to vanish before it’s too late. Taking her clothes off for men makes her stomach curl but Charlie tells herself that at least she’s putting her acting and dancing skills to good use. And though her fellow dancers seem eager to nab their sexy, sophisticated, and genuinely caring boss, she’s not interested. After all, Charlie Rourke doesn’t really exist—and the girl pretending to be her can't get distracted by romance.
Unfortunately, Charlie soon discovers that developing feelings for Cain is inevitable, and that those feelings may not be unrequited—but losing him when he finds out what she’s involved with will be more painful than any other sentence awaiting her.
One would think that a romance novel about a stripper who secretly runs heroin for her mob-boss stepfather would be pretty engaging. Unfortunately, Four Seconds to Lose was anything but. I enjoyed both of the previous installments in this series, but K.A. Tucker really failed to deliver with this one. Maybe venturing away from Kacey and Livie, the Cleary sisters, was a bad move. Maybe this should have remained a duology.
So, yes. The main characters in Four Seconds to Lose are Charlie (aforementioned stripper/drug-runner) and Cain, the owner of a strip club who’s been a secondary character in both Ten Tiny Breaths and One Tiny Lie. Both have got really crappy, probably jail-worthy pasts that they don’t want anyone to know about…and that’s about all they share. I seriously did not buy Charlie and Cain’s chemistry at all. Nope nope nope.
It’s lust at first sight with them, of course, since both are apparently hot as sin, but since they spent so much time hiding their past and themselves away (especially Charlie), I’m not sure I felt that they had a long-term relationship. Especially since Charlie is 18 while Cain is 29—it’s not that I’m opposed to the age difference, it’s that I’m concerned with Charlie’s maturity level, considering everything that happened to her. But whatever.
I was also just really annoyed by the drug-trafficking element that Tucker threw into Four Seconds to Lose. It was really not a big deal, which it freaking would be in real life. Charlie is terrified of her step-father, and when she makes a drop, her life is literally on the line; she’s been threatened with rape numerous times. But for huge chunks of the story, the author kind of ignores the heroin dealing side-plot in favor of having Charlie and Cain make sexy eyes at each other from across the strip club. And then when, finally, Charlie really does have to confront her past and her current illegal actions…poof! They disappear.
For realzies?
The drug-running was such an obvious plot device to up the tension in this book. Tucker didn’t treat it seriously or realistically at all, and I was super duper annoyed by the easy out that Charlie got, making it possible for her to sail off into the sunset with her man-toy. No no no.
There were some positive aspects to Four Seconds to Lose, though not many. The writing was engaging, even if the story wasn’t. I didn’t honestly have real complaints about the characters or their actions. It was just that this book was vaguely boring most of the time. I expect I’ll find it highly forgettable in the end.
Simply put, this is not K.A. Tucker’s best. The extremely likable, believable people and relationships that characterized her earlier books are absent from this, leaving Four Seconds to Lose frustrating and unsatisfying. I found the “exciting” and “gritty” story to be dull and unmemorable more than anything, and that’s a shame.
