Book Review: Safe at Last by Maya Banks

Safe at Last (Slow Burn #3)

By Maya Banks

Release Date: June 23, 2015

Source: Publisher

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Summary: They say young love doesn’t last, but a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with unique abilities and the hometown golden boy were determined to defy the odds. For Zack Covington, Anna-Grace—his “Gracie”—was the one. Until one night forever alters the course of their future, when a devastated Gracie disappears without a trace, leaving Zack to agonize over what happened to the girl he loved. As the years pass, his desperate efforts to find her uncovered nothing.

Now working for Devereaux Security, he stumbles across a painting featuring a special place only he and Gracie would know. The image is too perfectly rendered for it to be coincidence. His Gracie must be alive. When he finally tracks her down, he is shocked—and heart-broken—to discover the wounded shell of the girl he once knew and still loves. Her psychic gifts are gone, and worse, she believes he betrayed her all those years ago.

Zack has enemies, and once his weakness is discovered, Gracie becomes a target for revenge. He’ll have to save her before he can earn her trust and her love. And he vows they’ll never be torn apart again. 
Review: Seriously, Maya Banks is the queen of writing. She can write historical romance, romantic suspense, and just straight up romance. Any romance she writes is guaranteed to be full of emotion and some intense heat, so I was definitely excited to read the third installment in her Slow Burn series. 

Zack Covington hasn't forgotten about the love of his life who disappeared 12 years ago. He's spent the time since then looking for Gracie, but he hasn't found her. Until now. When Zack goes to a consult with his security agency and sees a painting that could only have been painted by Gracie, Zack is faced with the love of his life. One look at him, though, and Gracie is scared for her life and demands to be left alone. Zack is determined to get her back, but when an enemy of his hurts Gracie, Zack has to show Gracie she can trust him with both her life and her heart. 

I was really excited for this one. I really enjoyed Keep Me Safe and In His Keeping and couldn't wait to see Zack finally find his long lost love. When he finally found her, though, the story seemed to drag on and be an endless inner monologue of Zack beating himself up over every mistake that had happened in the past. I think that maybe two major events actually happened in this book and the rest of the book was Zack talking about his feelings or Gracie talking about how scared and confused she was. As a romantic suspense, I wanted a lot more action and a lot more romance. 

There are some sensitive issues in this book, specifically why Gracie is so scared of Zack, so there is definitely an emotional element to this story. However, that greatly deterred from any heat or romance present in this book until the very end, which seemed a bit too rushed in my opinion. There wasn't a lot of romance at all, just Zack and Gracie talking about how much they loved each other and how they adored each other. Where was the action? Where was the heat and intense physical attraction? 

We still got the characters we fell in love with in the first two books, but this book was lacking the physical attraction and danger aspect we got in the first two books. There was just too much talk of emotion and feelings and not enough actual action or plot movement. While it was still a quick read for me, I was left wanting more. If you want to try out Maya Banks, I would recommend not starting with this series. If you've read the first two books of this series, I'd stay you should still read Zack's story, but go in knowing that it's much slower and not as romantic as the rest of Maya's books.