In Her Sights
Fiction
2011
254
Two years ago Jasmine "Jazz" Parker, Jefferson County SWAT's only female sniper, drove away the one man she believed she could love--ex-Army Ranger turned reporter Luke Montgomery--to keep her past hidden. Now a vicious enemy is bent on destroying her life, forcing Jazz to turn to the one man she can never have in order to stop a killer before she and everyone she cares about pays the ultimate price.
In Her Sights was a quick and simple read. It is part of a series (Montgomery Justice Novels) if you wish to continue on the adventure with these characters. Sadly, I didn’t make a connection with any of the characters. 
For 99 cents (free if you’re a Prime Member like me) you can afford the simple entertainment this book provides.
The plot had a nice setup. Female bad-ass who knows her way around a rifle. Of course she will be gorgeous and her love interest will be just as gorgeous. They will hunt down her stalker that is setting her up for murder while she finally opens up to him and lets him know the dark secrets of her past. This is the premise of a lot of good books. This one fell a little bit short because the characters lacked development into their personalities. Who they were as individuals was just a little to generic for me. Maybe I’ve read too many romance stories? In any case, the lack of steam surrounding the two main characters isn’t my biggest issue with this book.
Spoiler alert! Although, this book was published in 2011 so….
It is just VERY unrealistic for a three year old to ask a woman whom she’s met only two times to be her mother. She doesn’t even call her Jasmine, she calls her Rapunzel because of her long hair. It’s realistic for Luke to tell Jasmine that he loves her, and propose to her. Even in front of his daughter Hope. BUT, the little girl asking her if she’d be her mommy?! I have issues with that. Hope is only three years old. “My friends have mommies but I don’t. Could you be my mommy instead of a princess?” That was a little too far for the happy ending. Something like “does this mean you’re going to live with me and daddy?” would have more than sufficed.
Also, I’m no SWAT expert, but I assume that a sniper would never leave their gun on their desk unattended. Isn’t there a rule against something like that? Even if it’s among other officers in your unit? There is a scene in the beginning of chapter two where the gun is referenced. Agent Tower, a known character that hates Jasmine, is flaunting a redheaded girlfriend around to the guys. One of the guys happened to move the gun away from the woman. The next mission, her shot is a foot wide from the target and botches her mission. It’s a little too obvious that one or both of these characters are the ones who will be sabotaging her life. The only thing that kept me reading was wanting to know why they were so passionate in their hate for her. I appreciate that the first two times we read about the perspective of Jasmine’s stalker, the author tried to keep it mysterious by not using gender specific pronouns. It failed though simply because of one sentence “face to face with her past, and she was just as ignorant now as she had been then.”
I feel like this review has gone for too long considering I didn’t love the book. I guess my issues with the story were bigger than I realized. The author knows how to write and the book flowed nicely. It wasn’t a failure. It just needed a little more of a boost. Some helpful tips from an editor perhaps. The first book in a series is never the strongest of the bunch. I imagine that the next books take off well with the other Montgomery brothers.
Kristin lives in the PNW with her husband, and three kids. She loves to read YA fiction, fantasy, and romance. She enjoys a few side-hustles, including creating bookreels/booktoks for authors. The only shows she watches are re-runs, and if she’s not reading a book, she’s listening to one.
