Deadly Sins
The Callahan’s, Book #2
By Lora Leigh
ISBN# 0312389094
Author’s Website: http://www.loraleigh.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
The second installment of Lora Leigh’s Callahan’s series turns the focus onto a different Callahan cousin, Logan, who just happened to my favorite when I was reading the first book, Midnight Sins, and after reading this one, he’s still my favorite!
Like his cousins Rafe and Crowe, Logan has lived a rough life. His family disowned him after his mother’s death and he and his cousins became the town’s pariahs having only each other and their Uncle Clyde (who is now deceased) to depend on.
Logan has seen what the Sweetrock Slasher can do, going after any females that the Callahan cousins get involved with and killing them to make sure that no Callahan heir is ever born and to hopefully get the Callahans to leave town and therefore forfeit their inheritance.
Amy Jefferson had gotten close to Logan when she was trying to use herself as bait (unbeknownest to Logan) to catch the slasher, but he ended up getting to her and killing her like the others. It’s something that has always weighed heavily on Logan and now he does everything he can to keep other innocent females from that same fate. Logan doesn’t date and when he does take a female to bed, he goes out of the way and out of Corbin County to keep her out of the reach of the murderer that haunts them. So imagine Logan’s surprise when one of his out of town one-night stands ends up a victim of the slasher. Not to mention his DNA being at the crime scene where the body had been dumped. Lucky for him his new neighbor, Skye O’Brien, was willing to alibi him and actually admit to being with him that night. Little did he know that Skye is an undercover FBI agent trying to do the same thing that Amy was; bait a killer.
I thought this was a pretty good read. The storyline continues pretty much where Midnight Sins left off. Rafe and Cami are engaged and the cousins are trying to keep her hidden as they continue to look for the person who is pulling all the strings with the murders as so far the two men the cousins have killed where just following orders, but from whom?
Logan has tried his best to stay out of relationships, but Skye is the one female he can’t ignore and she worms her way right into his heart. Now the killer has her in his sights and Logan knows that he can’t survive losing her.
“He couldn’t even find the will to yell at her now. A real man didn’t yell at those who weren’t exactly sane themselves, he told himself.”
I really did like Logan. He isn’t quite as controlling as Rafe could be, and I was hoping we could avoid that male dominance scene that Leigh always seems to include in her books that I hate so much, but no such luck. It came into play in the later part of the book, right when I was starting to think it wouldn’t come. All along Logan is telling Skye that she could never be more than a one-night stand to him and all of a sudden he decides that she is his property, but failed to inform her. He gets all pissy and decides to be rough with her and not even allow her to look at him during sex until she admits that she is ‘his’. *Rolling Eyes* Once she does, he goes back to the sweet Logan we know and love, but really, Leigh, why make every male character you write have that jack-ass male dominant scene? I seriously can’t stand it, but hey at least he didn’t force Skye to perform anal sex as a way of claiming her like some of her other male characters in Leigh’s books usually do. Other than that, I really can’t complain about this book, it definitely kept my interest and kept me having to read ‘just one more chapter’ and there were even a few scenes I decided to re-read.
The only other thing that bothered me was there were still several editing mistakes that weren’t caught. It’s not as bad as it was in Midnight Sins, but there were some pretty big ones such as putting the wrong character names in a sentence. For example, they were pretending that Rafe got hurt and were going to have a couple bodyguards help him to the car and they say that they helped Logan to the car, when Logan wasn’t even leaving. Also, somewhere along the line the slasher changed the color of bow he used from yellow to red, but I’m sure that was an inconsistency with the writing instead of the editing.
I found Skye to be an interesting character and really liked that she was just as tough as the boys (or at least she thought so) and never backed down from anything. Although I thought, her pregnancy was pretty predictable….I was expecting it from the very beginning of the book, but I still enjoyed the reveal (and Logan’s reaction) immensely.
The Callahan cousins are still no closer to finding who is behind the slasher killings at the end of this book, but they are all starting to forge relationships that they never thought possible; ones that they now can’t live without. I thought for sure Crowe’s book would be next since he is the only remaining cousin. So I was pretty surprised when I read the synopsis of the third book, Secret Sins (expected publication November 2012), and see that it’s about Archer. Hey, at least that means there will be more than three books to the series, which is a plus and I do like Archer! And, hopefully we’ll be able to see more Logan and pregnant Skye in the new book!
