TRBChallenge Review: Captive of Fate

Captive of Fate by Lindsay McKenna
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars

“Damn you, Colonel. You're going to get everything that's been coming to you. I promise. God, how I promise.” 

I know, I can't believe there isn't an exclamation point in that sentence either.(!) 

The theme for this month's TBRChallenge was Change of Plans. In Captive of Fate Alanna is a twenty-nine year old woman who works for a Senator in D.C. She's been pulling sixty hour work weeks when he suddenly springs a trip to Costa Rica on her. She's supposed to go down there and prove that the US's head of a relief effort for earthquake victims, Marine Colonel Matt Breckenridge, is running and making money off a survivor goods black market. Having worked for the senator awhile and been tainted against Matt with all the horrible stories the senator has told her and that Matt is at fault for the senator's son's death in Vietnam, Alanna is gung-ho to get the evidence. 

He was honest in a way she had never known a man to be.

Of course, she gets a change of heart (plans) when she meets and spends time with him. Their first meeting initially sets up the friction with Alanna's presence bumping a radio specialist Matt really needed and him being angry at her but that dynamic doesn't rage as hard in this as I was anticipating as Matt softens and pretty obviously likes/falls for her quickly. Alanna for her part tries to keep her distance because she's been listening to the senator for so long but seeing Matt in action in Costa Rica and then realizing the evidence doesn't point to him at all for the black market has her leaning more into her attraction. 

He represented the emotional freedom she longed for. Yet, at the same time, he was a threat to her sense of security. He was dangerous. 

With the 1983 publishing date of this, you'll get a lot of Matt is so hot because of his masculine masculinity, He's sooooooooo male!, and leaned a bit too much into the fish out of water Alanna with some overemotional helpless female. With the Vietnam War fresh in memories there was a ton of “[...]Politicians versus military. Dove versus hawk.[...]” dialogue and ideology going on, I about fell off the couch when Alanna made a crack about Marines having a reputation for being rapists; 2000s military rom-suspense were, for the most part, ever up to touching that. It was interesting to me how Matt was portrayed, his thoughts on Vietnam (war is hell and all that but with how it was a waste of human life) and how though he was a Marine Recon the author worked hard at portraying him softer, very invested in emotions and wanting out of that kind of life, again I feel like the 2000s subgenre works hard at the messaging of for good of country/way of life and all that. (we're getting some years removed from the Afghanistan War so maybe I need to dip back more into rom-suspense and see if these feelings are being grappled with again) 

The last 40% they've left Costa Rica and the story kind of lost it's way for me. They romp around Maine for awhile as love, sex, and marriage are declared, had, and planned for but there's the senator wanting to take Matt down lingering in the background. There's a, sort of, third act breakup for the last 10% and Alanna leans way too hard into helpless female as Matt takes care of business and we eventually get our HEA. Some interesting character aspects to Matt, some disappointing from Alanna, the constant talk of “maleness” was wearing, a story that seemed to lose it's way for a while, kind of an odd late betrayal reveal, and interesting post war authorial thinking in the fabric, all lead to a not bad but probably not memorable book.

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