Nina would have died without the life saving enhancements Ewan created. The technology and upgrades made her a super soldier. Shunned by her family and her emotions in turmoil she became Ewan’s bodyguard. Groups are desperate for the technology that is now no longer legal and threatening his life. Nina would do anything to protect him and the emotion they both felt was useless may finally mean something to them both.

This is for books 1 and 2 of Megan Hart’s “The Protector” series.


Nina's basically the female version of your typical ex-military alpha hero, which worked surprisingly well. I like books with strong heroines, but usually they also have even stronger heroes, so it was a breath of fresh air to have a heroine who's both stronger and more alpha than her partner. She's delightfully no-nonsense, and makes no apologies for who - or what - she is. She doesn't hesitate to call out Ewan's bullshit, either professionally or personally. When Ewan points out that they're from completely different worlds, that his is dinner parties and business deals and hers is fighting and violence, Nina fires back that it's people like him that make people like her necessary. She also makes no bones about the fact that they're on opposite sides ideologically, and but she respects his opinion on that, which, frankly, is much more levelheaded than I would be in that situation. Without the enhancement upgrades, which Ewan actively fights against, Nina's brain will slowly degrade until she's basically a vegetable. Nina, however, has more of a "carpe diem" attitude, and I'm sure it also helps that she views their relationship - as boss and bodyguard as well as a couple - as temporary.

Interesting premise...

I adore scifi romance, but I'm not a big fan of the "women kidnapped by aliens" genre, so it can sometimes be slim pickings.  The blurb reminded me of the Deus Ex game series, which is a personal favorite, so I was very interested.  This is, at heart, a scifi version of a "bodyguard and client" romantic suspense, and is a nice mix of action and romance.

Nina's basically the female version of your typical ex-military alpha hero, which worked surprisingly well.  I like books with strong heroines, but usually they also have even stronger heroes, so it was a breath of fresh air to have a heroine who's both stronger and more alpha than her partner.  She's delightfully no-nonsense, and makes no apologies for who - or what - she is.  She doesn't hesitate to call out Ewan's bullshit, either professionally or personally.  When Ewan points out that they're from completely different worlds, that his is dinner parties and business deals and hers is fighting and violence, Nina fires back that it's people like him that make people like her necessary.  She also makes no bones about the fact that they're on opposite sides ideologically, and but she respects his opinion on that, which, frankly, is much more levelheaded than I would be in that situation.  Without the enhancement upgrades, which Ewan actively fights against, Nina's brain will slowly degrade until she's basically a vegetable.  Nina, however, has more of a "carpe diem" attitude, and I'm sure it also helps that she views their relationship - as boss and bodyguard as well as as a couple - as temporary.

“I’ve tossed it around from every direction. What it took to bring you into my life. How you’re the worst possible choice for me—”
“As far as compliments go, I have to say, you could use a few lessons in how to give them better.”

I was torn on Ewan.  He's a bit Darcy-ish about his attraction to Nina - a lot of the chapters from his point of view are about how much he hates his attraction to her.  The part I had the hardest time with was the secret he kept from Nina.  Ewan's guilt for his part in the enhancement program is a driving motivator in his life.  So, besides being ridiculously hypocritical, keeping that from Nina felt, basically, like a betrayal.  Ewan has some roundabout logic that he doesn't want to get into a relationship with Nina because he's afraid it might actually turn into a longterm relationship.  Part of her attraction to him, actually, is that as part of the enhancement process, she's lost the ability to feel strong emotions, so she could never fall in love with him.

“[W]atching her in action had been one of the hottest things Ewan had ever seen . . . and he hated it. He didn’t need a reminder about what she was, and he definitely didn’t need to find it attractive. The idea of it was perverse, like if the doctor had wanted to make love to his monster after creating it.”

Their relationship is...interesting.  From the start, there's a tension between them that is unusual for both of them.  She's much stronger than him, obviously, and he actually gets off on her hurting him - nothing whips and chains, level, just biting and pinching, mostly.  Ewan being Ewan, though, it's another thing he doesn't want to accept and tries to turn back around on her.  Neither seemed to be able to decide whether they really wanted a relationship or not.  While they do, eventually, fall in love (thanks to what seems like a giant dose of forced intimacy and cabin fever), I wasn't completely sold on it, given Ewan's actions and general selfishness.  While he certainly takes steps towards redeeming himself, by the end of the book, he's still not there.  Also, this is part of a series, so there's no HEA, and, in fact, the ending is a bit of a cliffhanger.

I waffled back and forth on whether to give this 3 or 4 stars, and eventually rounded up to 4 because I do really want to know what happens next.  Can they make their relationship work?  Now that one threat to Ewan's life has been dealt with, will more spring up, especially once their relationship becomes public?

Overall, while I found some parts frustrating, I'm very much looking forward to the next book to find out what happens next.  Recommended if you like romantic suspense scifi with strong alpha heroines!

It was an okay book. I really couldn't get into. I like this author's other work though.

3.5*


I found the blurb for this book intriguing.

Nina Bronson signed on to serve her country as a soldier but after she died she ended up as so much more.

‘I didn’t have a choice about the tech, you know. I’d signed that agreement when I went into the service, giving them the right to use my body as they saw fit in the service to my country. I thought that meant donating my organs, something like that. I had no idea it meant they could keep my corpse alive long enough to experiment on it. I didn’t know they were going to outfit me with a bunch of hardware and software that would end up killing me slowly.’

Nina is now enhanced and working in private security, she’s the best you can get and because of the price tag that comes along with her very few can actually afford her services.
She surprisingly finds herself working for Ewan Donahue, I say surprisingly because he’s an incredibly rich and powerful man that’s lobbied against enhancements and adjustments and he’s managed to put a stop to them.

There’s a lot here that makes this an interesting read. Nina is a woman totally confident in herself and her abilities and while she finds herself attracted to Ewan she’s no intention of ever taking it further.
Ewan carries a lot of regrets over his part in the enhancement programme and he fully understands the irony of him hiring Nina. He also finds himself very attracted to Nina, it helps that’s she’s totally unlike any other woman he’s known.

The more time these two spend together the more they get to know the real person underneath the public front.
They draw closer but still there’s a huge gap between them. Part of which is that Nina is deteriorating, she desperately needs an upgrade that Ewan has stopped.

Like I said there’s a lot here, often it’s a case of two steps forward, one step back or in some cases one step forward, two steps back. The sexual tension grows the more time they spend together and it’s only a matter of time before something gives.

So why only 3.5*?

It felt over long and the push/pull got to the point it was driving me crazy. I’m not known for my patience so this might not be as bad for you.

The plot appeared to have a huge hole in it which annoyed me but not enough to stop me moving onto the next one.

All section I copied came from the advanced reader copy I received and may change in the final version.

I voluntarily read a review copy kindly provided by NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.

A unique futuristic read. I love the aspect of a strong female soldier as a body guard. Nina is strong and sassy. Even with her enhanced abilities she still is completely human. Ewan grows on you as a character though out the book. I wasn't sure i was going to like him as much as a did. You feel the attraction between the two from the start but is a slow burn romance. And that slow burn will ignite the sheets. I love the action and somewhat of a mystery behind Dangerous Promise. Even with the cliffhanger I'm loving Nina and Ewan more. I can't wait to read the next book in the series to see how everything plays out. Dangerous Promise is packed full of everything you would love in an story and will not disappoint.

Megan Hart's "Dangerous Promise" kept me hooked and reading into the night. Awesome plot. Compelling characters.

When I started this book I knew it was part of a series and the concept sounded interesting. While it isn't unusually to find a female body guard not featured in romance and romantic suspense series this one added a little twist that had me thinking long after I finished the book.

Nina Bronson is human but while her body and mind were once human she is now part cyborg (Technological enhancements ) for lack of a better word. She signed her life away to the military without realizing the could do what they wanted with her body.

The author's ability to write Nina keeping her part human and part cyborg I enjoyed. Megan Hart about into question a lot on how technology has changed out world and can change out our in the future.

The author played both side of the questions she asked and it was enjoyable to read the debate and banter that flowed natural though out the book.

I can't wait to read the next in the series

I personally enjoy books that have me thinking long after I put the book away and start the next one.

Thank you to Netglley and the Publisher: St. Martin's for the advance copy.
#DangerousPromise #NetGalley

Really enjoyed this story, I read part 1&2 in one sitting. The premiss was totally different than anything I had read before but I could imagine there would be a lot of people both for and against the use of technology being used in this way to save lives.Nina was so strong, I love a strong heroine and unapologetic about it and Ewan was so gruff you had to love him. I look forward to part 3.

‘Dangerous Promise’ is quite a unique, somewhat futuristic take on the bodyguard cyborg and the client, or at least it’s probably one that will appeal to readers who are hungry for a kickass, enhanced, ex-military female who conducts her personal life like the stereotypical no-strings military alpha hero that are dime a dozen in this genre.

Not that a role reversal is uncommon in the plethora of romance stories today, but Nina Bronson is a female protagonist unusual enough to make anyone sit up and take note. That’s the book’s standout feature, along with the immediate conflict posed by Nina’s very own abilities being the very issue the billionaire womaniser Ewan Donohue has aggressively fought against. As the female mirror image of the alpha hero, Nina is an unmistakably strong female lead with technological enhancements that only elevate her above a ‘normal’ book-heroine, right down to her own casual hookups and her willingness to sleep with clients if that would protect them (if that even makes sense).

Unafraid to call out misogyny and the double standards that women like her face, Nina might just be a loudspeaker for what many might feel about the double standards and the complaints voiced against the romance genre today as she kicks and punches her way out of things/issues both verbally and physically. Next to her, Ewan can only be the beta hero, dimmed and outshone in every way by Nina’s wonder-woman abilities until he’s a grovelling mess, their only tussling happening in bed after he yields to her judgement when it comes to his protecting his life.

Upping the sexual tension with Ewan as they circle each other in a game that’s akin to a 2-steps-forward-one-step-back dance is perhaps the form of foreplay that Hart wants to bring across, but somehow, Nina’s relationship with Ewan seems unequal in so many ways. Ewan’s own history with women and the way he treated them until Nina didn’t exactly made me a huge fan of his; the constant comparison of how awfully selfish he used to be with others and with Nina proved more of a turn-off than a revelation of how special she is supposed to be. Moreover, for all of Nina’s insistence about owning her own sexuality, her sudden insistence that sex should only happen between consensual adults who want and like each other equally is the argument she uses to keep Ewan at arms’s length. As much as the inevitable sex scenes are hot, I can’t quite get on board with the subtly manipulative and contradictory sides of Nina and Ewan, the former of whom can seem to do no wrong even as she blows hot and cold.

As the first of a 3-book series, ‘Dangerous Promise’ draws out the dialogue and the threats much longer than I expected. The plot advances, albeit slowly and what would be typically resolved in the last three-quarters of the book reads instead like the end of a tv episode, where the characters return for round 2 and subsequently, round 3 as the series goes on. Hart definitely delivers very well-written action scenes, though these are short and brief and interspersed with a lot of dialogue-turned-flirty-banter that can get repetitive, inevitably slowing the pacing of the story. There’s also sort of a cliffhanger but there’s very much the sense that whatever resolution that Hart gives is a temporary one. Nina’s and Ewan’s story is far from over, that much is clear.

It’s kind of tough to write a review for a book which I wanted so much to like but fell a bit short of expectations, and that’s only because I prefer the type of relationships where both the h/hr need each other in equal ways, where both aren’t beyond reproach. But if the alpha female dominating the headlines, so to speak is what you’re after (Nina is a feminist’s wet dream after all), then ‘Dangerous Promise’ is the type of read that will be your catnip.

Dangerous Promise, is part one of the Protectors series. Meaning we are left with a cliff hanger. Good news is next part is only one month away.