Title: Eclipse the Moon (Starlight's Shadow #2)
Author: Jessie Mihalik
Publication Date: 12 July 2022
Genres: Sci-Fi Romance
My rating: 3 Stars
Blurb
Kee Ildez has been many things: hacker, soldier, bounty hunter. She never expected to be a hero, but when a shadowy group of traitors starts trying to goad the galaxy’s two superpowers into instigating an interstellar war, Kee throws herself into the search to find out who is responsible—and stop them.
Digging up hidden information is her job, so hunting traitors should be a piece of cake, but the primary suspect spent years in the military, and someone powerful is still covering his tracks. Disrupting their plans will require the help of her entire team, including Varro Runkow, a Valovian weapons expert who makes her pulse race.
Quiet, grumpy, and incredibly handsome, Varro watches her with hot eyes but ignores all of her flirting, so Kee silently vows to keep her feelings strictly platonic. But that vow will be put to the test when she and Varro are forced to leave the safety of their ship and venture into enemy territory alone.
Cut off from the rest of their team, they must figure out how to work together—and fast—because a single misstep will cost thousands of lives.
Review
This second installment of the series gives us space adventures galore but I was underwhelmed by the romance.
The romance conflict hinges on the heroine lusting after hero but thinking he is avoiding her while he is avoiding her because her is attracted to her but feels he can't protect her the way he has too. It is messy and based on a very antiquated sense of chivalry and obligation which was difficult for me to reconcile with the hyper modern space world the story is set in.
I feel the Valovians with all there psychic powers and paranormal abilities are similar to Nalini Singh's psys which I don't mind in principle but the similarity did stand out to me.
I liked Varro for the most part though his sense of guilt and failure over impossible tasks he set to himself became too much. It made sense initially but then it became annoying as it happened over and over again.
Kee was nice enough, a bit your stereotypical hacker girl - a bit wild, a bit loner, smart but not as physically strong as her teammates which made her insecure. In her personal relationship she felt she was too much to her lover - too forward, too emotional (things she has been told by previous partners) and that made her guarded and worried that it would be the same for him.
They kept getting to try to be together only to be pulled apart either by cuircustmace (they are amid a wild chase with the bad guys in space) or by their own feelings of guilt / sense of obligation.
While I enjoyed and was fully invested in the suspense and adventure elements of the story, I felt the romantic arc was unevenly paced. It is not closed door romance but the sex scene (explicit) only happens after 90% mark. I would not describe it as slow burn but rather as a kind of delayed gratification and didn't work for me. Out of the blue we get some domination/submission dynamic thrown in - it honestly felt like Kee and Varro became different people, not the characters I have followed along in the story so far. The romance didn't flow smoothly for me, too many elements in it didn't fit with each other. Of course, this is all subjective interpretation but it's how I read it and why I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.
I have come to realize that Jessie Mihalik's book are more about the space adventures than the romance but when I find the romance unevenly paced and not convincing, I don't know if I will continue with this series. Depends on the MCs, I still might give the next book a go.
