Review: Fallout

Reviewed by Jen
 

I liked the set-up on this story.  A terrible hurricane causes a potential disaster at a Texas nuclear plant.  Derek and Sambit are among a small crew called in to secure the facility.  Sambit is a mild mannered Indian man who believes in keeping his private life, private.  He is a university professor who is there to use his theoretical knowledge to deal with the reactors.  Derek is an out-and-proud, boisterous robotics expert from NASA. He's there to maneuver his robot into areas that are unsafe for people to enter.

The two men start off like oil and water, but quickly become attracted to each other.  They struggle with their differences and with Sambit's reservations about their chances of making something work between them.  All this, while dealing with the dangerous nuclear threat, and later, separation from one another.

As much as I liked the premise, however, I had some serious problems with the execution of the story.  Derek starts off as a real dick and he really doesn't like Sambit much. But he makes a complete 180, deciding he not only likes Sambit, but wants him in practically a nanosecond. His change of heart is done with very little prompting and the magnitude of it left me scratching my head.  It just days before Derek sets his sights on a relationship with Sambit and he's trying to figure out how they are going to live together in less than a week.

In the meantime, Sambit is fixated on how he and Derek could never be together because they live two hours away from each other. Yes, he had a long distance relationship that failed before, but that was intercontinental long-distance.  Big difference.  Both guys are way, way too focused on the long-term after just a few days and a hand-job between them.

I found that I didn't particularly like either character, either. Derek was too much of an ass at first and too pushy later.  And Sambit was too wrapped up in his issues to reach out and take what he wants.  I never felt any genuine emotion for them or between them. Then, the ending felt rushed.  We waited the whole damn book for these two to get together and we actually only see a tiny bit of their HEA.

This one wasn't great for me.

Rating: D+

*ARC Provided by NetGalley

Click to purchase: Amazon

  Fallout

by Ariel Tachna

Release Date: May 21, 2012

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press