Forbidden Stranger by Megan Hart

Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld

Forbidden Stranger is the final instalment of Megan Hart’s futuristic Protector trilogy, in which the overarching storyline pairs a kick-ass female bodyguard with a wealthy billionaire industrialist. I loved the premise of the series, the author’s world-building is terrific, the narration is excellent, and the first book is gripping, but sadly, books two and three suffer from the same problems – too much filler, not enough action and final acts that are rushed. On reflection, this story would probably have worked better as a duology, with the events of book two stripped of the filler and combined with a pared-down book three.

Please note that there will be spoilers for books one and two – Dangerous Promise and Wicked Attraction – in this review.

In Dangerous Promise, listeners were introduced to the author’s vision of a near-future coloured by war, environmental damage and cyber-terrorism. Nina Bronson is one of fifteen former soldiers who were technologically enhanced during life-saving surgery, the nano-chips implanted in their brains enabling them to be stronger and faster than normal humans and to control their emotional and physical reactions. The chips also allow the enhanced to have their memories wiped and for them to be reset after sensitive assignments should their clients so wish. Nina is engaged by billionaire businessman Ewan Donahue, the most vocal opponent of enhancement technology, as his personal bodyguard after several failed attempts on his life. The irony of Ewan employing one of the enhanced to protect him is not lost on either of them, and through their conversations and interactions, the author very credibly explores the moral and ethical issues relating to the ability to control or even destroy a person’s memories. Their gradual falling for each other in this story is well done, although there is plenty of angst on the horizon because listeners are aware long before Nina is that Ewan was responsible for the development of the enhancement tech in the first place – and that he’s keeping that information from her even as they’re falling in love. By the time Wicked Attraction opens, Nina has discovered the truth and left Ewan, but has reluctantly returned to his side in order to continue to protect him from those who are threatening him. But the tables are turned when she is kidnapped by those who will stop at nothing to access the secretly implanted upgrades in her head. At the end of the book, the pair are reunited, but Ewan’s worst nightmare has come to pass – Nina has been tortured and reset, so she has no memory of Ewan or of what they had come to mean to each other.

When Forbidden Stranger opens, Nina is a different woman to the one we first met, and Ewan worries that the woman he’d fallen in love with may be gone forever:

Her sunny grin. It was the same and yet so different, the way Nina herself had changed, overall. Gone was the snark, along with her determination, focus, and stubbornness. She hadn’t become anything close to meek or mild, but she never argued with him the way she had before.

She’s less guarded, more vulnerable, and believes herself to be recuperating from a serious accident at the home of her boss. He’s kind and generous and utterly gorgeous and she can’t help being just a little bit infatuated with him – although of course, being her boss, he’s off limits. What Nina can’t know is that when she was experimented upon, she was implanted with a self-destruct mechanism; any reminder of her past that isn’t something she remembers on her own is likely to set it off (in fact, it already has; what Nina believes was an accident, was actually an attempt to take her own life) and Ewan isn’t taking any chances. He’s installed her on a remote island with two “caretakers” who are charged with preventing Nina from finding out anything about her former life until such time as his research team can find a way of deactivating the self-destruct program.

After the experiments and being reset time after time, Nina’s memory is completely scrambled. She gets feelings and insights she doesn’t understand and then forgets about them; she feels embarrassed that she has to ask the same questions over and over, and Ms. Hart conveys Nina’s frustration and her struggles to make sense of everything very well. Her memory loss also means we get to see (hear) her falling for Ewan all over again, while he’s so desperately in love with her it’s killing him to have to lie to her in order to keep her safe. The problem is that this goes on for around two thirds of the book, and whilst it’s well done, it becomes repetitive and I found myself wishing for things to just move on already. The other major issue is that the romantic conflict in this story is recycled from books one and two; that whole “I love you / you lied to me / I’m pissed at you and never want to see you again” thing has outstayed its welcome by this point. While it made sense that Nina would be furious at Ewan’s deception in Dangerous Promise, here her reasons for being angry with him and walking away are… let’s say, not well thought-out. Yes, he lies to her, but he has to – he’s advised by her doctor and his research team not to tell her anything about her past so as to prevent activation of the self-termination program. For Nina to be pissed at him for wanting to stop her killing herself feels petty and it’s a flimsy device used to separate them at the eleventh hour.

Saskia Maarleveld’s narration, however, remains a high point of this series. Her vocal characterisations are excellent, her pacing is spot on and she differentiates very well between the two principals and the various secondary characters who people the story. While she uses an American accent for the narrative and the bulk of the dialogue, Nina’s two “carers” are performed using a pleasant Irish lilt, and I continue to enjoy her portrayal of Ewan, who sounds attractively and convincingly masculine. She skilfully conveys the change in Nina’s personality, getting across the character’s confusion and frustration at her inability to remember things, while losing the underlying sense of cynicism evident in the previous stories and bringing a vulnerability and openness to her voice we haven’t heard before. It’s a strong and engaging performance all round, and my only real criticism is that there were one or two occasions where I felt that Ms. Maarleveld hadn’t injected quite the right degree of emotion into her tone; but that’s a minor criticism overall, and didn’t affect my enjoyment or opinion of her work here.

Forbidden Stranger wraps up the Protector trilogy in a satisfying manner and as Nina and Ewan really have been to hell and back (more than once!) their HEA is well-deserved. But parts of the book are repetitive, and the dénouement is rushed; the story feels off-balance, and I can’t deny that the central portion – consisting basically of Nina getting frustrated at what she can’t remember and deciding to seduce Ewan, and Ewan trying to resist her while not letting slip anything that could trigger the self-destruct program – dragged somewhat. The good parts of the story are very, very good, but books two and three are a bit of a let-down after the great start, and the whole thing could have used some judicious pruning and tightening up.

Caz