Review: Kerrigan Byrne's DANCING WITH DANGER.

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Q: which kind of anti-hero are you more drawn to: the charming, rogue type or the terrifying, mostly silent type?

Kerrigan Byrne’s Dancing with Danger has a lot of the KB trademarks.

✅ a hero on the wrong side of the law.
✅ a heroine who comes across as “innocent” but not so sheltered that she can’t handle the drama associated with him.
✅ some darkness & violence.
✅ but a once in a lifetime love can offer some kind of hope & redemption.

Wealthy and privileged Mercy Goode puts the skills she’s learned as a member of the Detective Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis to work after the unfortunate death of a friend. Whom does she discover at her friend’s murder scene but the charming ne’er-do-well, Raphael Sauvageau, smuggler, gangster, & lord of the Fauves?

Assuming Raphael to have been the murdered woman’s lover, Mercy agrees to exchange info with him in an effort to find her killer.

But the more Mercy & Raphael are around each other, the more their chemistry becomes apparent until Raphael issues a daring proposition 🤭.

The explosive chemistry between Raphael & Mercy is complemented by the sweetness of how much Raphael delights in Mercy’s somewhat unorthodox personality. She’s saucy & he loves it.

You can tell he has feelings for his chaton, as he calls her, from the beginning & an antihero having tender feelings that most people don’t pick up on (because they seem impervious to softer emotion  ) is one of my fave things.

While I read Dancing with Danger quickly & enjoyed it thoroughly, the plot also often feels rushed to me. The connection between the leads is intense but things between them progress so quickly that it feels a bit shallow. I think the somewhat short length of the book might be a factor here too.

But with that being said Dancing with Danger is a sexy, fast read with enough of those things I love about KB’s writing to bring a sparkle to a reader’s eyes.

I waffled a little on the rating but I’m going with 3.5⭐️. Dancing with Danger is out on 02/09/21.