For a Harlequin Romantic Suspense - this was a really good book..

Daniela Flores is chosen to go to a exotic wildlife preserve to study Sea Lions. The island is also famous for its shark infestation. Daniela is just getting back to life after a horrible accident.

There are two shark experts on the island along with a man filming a documentary and a intern and a bird conservationist. Turns out one of the shark experts is her ex husband Sean Carmichael.

There was extreme heartbreak in Dani and Sean's marriage that caused it to implode. Sean doesnt think she is strong enough to be on the island.

This was not just a romance about two people trying to overcome and heartache and realize they still loved each other. There were plenty of realistic scenes with the sharks, and the sea lions. There is also someone in the group trying to sabotage the missions on the island.

This won on some sites best contemporary romance list so I thought I would give it try and was not disappointed. Very enjoyable read. ( )

Daniela is a conservation biologist and she has the chance of lifetime. You start out in this story not knowing her past. Slowly the past is explained and you learn that she is on this island and so is her ex. I felt it was drawn out and slow moving at first. When I got towards the end I didn't want to put the book down. You needed to build up the characters and to get to know them better. ( )

Overall, I liked this book. I didn't think there were enough sharks. But, then, I love sharks. That was the big draw of this book for me. I'm someone who treats Shark Week like a week-long holiday so of course I'm going to want a good chunk of the book to be centered on them. Speaking of sharks, I question what happens at the end: I'm all for spreading the fact that sharks aren't mindless killers. Because they're not. However, the level of cognitive awareness given to Shirley that she wouldn't attack Sean while he's bleeding out in the water was odd and awfully convenient to me. And even if it were feasible and she wouldn't attack him, what about all the other sharks? This is shark infested waters and he was bleeding a lot.

There wasn't a lot of suspense in this romantic suspense. There were only a couple of odd occurrences in the first half of the book. The whole conflict basically sprang in the last 40%. The villain and his/her reason for doing what s/he was doing was out-of-left-field crazy and nonsensical. And they were really only stranded one night.

Aside from those things and the presence of a certain euphemism that causes me a certain level of anguish, I thought this was well written and interesting. I loved that there were sharks. I loved there was a Latina Heroine. But mostly it satisfied my desire to read a romance with a married couple. While Sean and Daniela weren't married anymore it was still all about their marriage, how it failed, what needed to be fixed, and them making their way back to each other. I really liked the way their story evolved. And I loved that when they did get back together they started up with counseling again. That they didn't just get back together and have a perfect relationship. 3.5 stars. ( )