Phoenix Rising by Corrina Lawson

Phoenix Rising by Corrina Lawson

1st book in The Phoenix Institute series

Here’s the blurb from Samhain’s site:

He was born to be a weapon. For her, he must learn to be a hero.
A Phoenix Institute story
Since birth, Alec Farley has been trained to be a living weapon. His firestarter and telekinetic abilities have been honed to deadly perfection by the Resource, a shadowy anti-terrorist organization—the only family he has ever known. What the Resource didn’t teach him, though, is how to play well with others.
When psychologist Beth Nakamora meets Alec to help him work on his people skills, she’s hit with a double-barreled first impression. He’s hot in more ways than one. And her first instinct is to rescue him from his insular existence.
Her plan to kidnap and deprogram him goes awry when her latent telepathic ability flares, turning Alec’s powers off. Hoping close proximity will reignite his flame, she leads him by the hand through a world he’s never known. And something else flares: Alec’s anger over everything he’s been denied. Especially the passion that melds his mind and body with hers.
The Resource, however, isn’t going to let anything—or anyone—steal its prime investment. Alec needs to be reminded where his loyalties lie…starting with breaking his trust in the woman he’s come to love.

Product Warnings

Contains telekinetic sex, nuclear explosion sex hot enough to melt steel, and various and sundry swear words.

I have such mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I feel like I should have loved it since it’s an idea I like. I want to read more superhero/comic book type romances. Give me some X-Men or Wildcats or Witchblade or something along those lines (I confess to being a product of 90s comics. I was an Image fan. No one ever said I had the best taste in comics). Marjorie Liu comes very very close with her Dirk and Steele books, but I really do want more.

One of the main problems I had with this book is that Alec seemed so juvenile in his emotions. I never quite found him romance hero material. Hero material, yes, but he seemed locked in his teens as far as his hormones went. This is not what I want when reading an action romance. Beth also seemed so young and I never really felt as if she was the competent, professional that she was supposed to be. I almost found the leader of F-Team (the elite team that backs him up) more appealing. Actually, I found Beth’s adopted father Drake intriguing too. Now if there were books about them, I’d read them.

Even with all the problems that I had with the two main characters, I did enjoy reading the book. I liked the writing, for the most part, and aside from Alec’s rather juvenile behavior, the action was great. I will look for the next book in the series since I think it has potential and my qualms with this one are mostly with these particular protagonists. Next time, hopefully, we won’t be trying to meld a coming-of-age story with an action romance. So in the end, I thought of it as a happy-for-now, rather than a happy-ever-after.

Does anyone have any suggestions for some action/superhero romances?