Review: Lost & Found (PASS Series Book 4) by Freya Barker

Lost & Found by Freya Barker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent Romantic Suspense for the Over 40s

This is the fourth in a series of books that are independent of each other but revolve around a security company that at least one of the main characters works for. You don’t need to read the other books to know what’s going on, but you’ll have a richer experience if you do.

I really enjoy Freya Barker’s writing. She writes about people who have some life experience under their belt. Her characters are believable because of their flaws and strengths. She also writes about people over 30 having sex, which seems to be a rare thing in the romance world (sadly).

This book is about Yanis, the owner of PASS and Bree one of his valued employees. There has always been an undercurrent running through the other books between these two, but no one has ever understood what it is. In this book, we finally find out.

Yanis is 46 and was a police officer who went on to set up his security business around 15/16 years ago. He’s the son of very exuberant hippy parents who embarrass him on a regular basis. He is their polar opposite and is very shut down and self-contained. He doesn’t express his emotions well but is an excellent leader with sharp intelligence and an ability to get the best out of his team.

Bree is 42 and started working for PASS soon after it started up. She has a psychology degree that backs up her good instincts about people and their behaviour. She is also adept at self-defence, using both weapons and hand to hand skills. She is intelligent and articulate and able to get people to trust her and talk to her. She’s good at understanding people’s motives.

Bree is asked to go undercover by a client and ends up on the wrong end of an obsession of a deranged stalker. Injured in the course of doing her job, Yanis swoops in and demands that he take care of her by moving into her apartment so he can keep her off her injured leg. He knows that after fearing for her life he can’t hold back from Bree anymore. Forced into close proximity with Yanis forces Bree to look at her boss and decide if risking her heart is worth the possibility of making it work with this closely guarded man.

One of the reasons I really enjoyed this book is that though romance is a big part of this book, it’s not the entirety of it. There is a very large chunk devoted to the suspense part, which is quite a big investigation going on throughout, that seems to get bigger with every chapter. The suspense plot is complex and interesting and it kept me thinking right until the big reveal. I liked that sometimes work had to come first for the main characters, even when they didn’t like it.

I also liked that a lot of the romance problems got solved by talking them through. There weren’t ridiculous misunderstandings or jealousy over past partners, there was opening up to each other, even when it felt hard to do so. I also liked that Bree called Yanis on his overbearing ways on multiple occasions and he was able to curb it after talking things through. This was a grown-up romance and I enjoyed that aspect tremendously as good communication is often lacking in more conventional romance novels aimed at the twenty-something reader. Miscommunication is an over-used plot device that drives me nuts, so it’s great when an author doesn’t use it very often.

This book has well well-developed characters, who have a believable and pretty hot relationship and a really clever suspense plot. I really enjoyed this book and devoured it in one afternoon. I highly recommend it if you like your romance to have a little more meat on its bones than usual.

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