Review: A Kiss Doesn’t Lie by Robin Alexander

With more than a dozen novels under her belt, Louisiana resident Robin Alexander has created a roller coaster of an adventure tale with her novel A Kiss Doesn’t Lie. Dr. Nicolas Grant was never really there; even when he WAS there he wasn’t “there there.”  So when Jodi Grant was told of her father’s death, she didn’t feel a great sense of loss; she hardly knew the man, really, and cared nothing for his archaeology work. In fact, she hated it. But like a decent human being, she attended his funeral, where she received a really weird letter from…her father. Which is when all hell broke lose. She was abducted at gunpoint, drugged, and delivered to the incredibly grumpy Dr. Blair Whittington, somewhere in the jungles of Peru. Dr. Whittington wants Jodi to help her find the treasure Dr. Grant was killed for, and Jodi has no idea what is happening. When Whittington presents several letters to Jodi from her father, it quickly becomes clear that there are clues hidden within. With the backing of a mysterious benefactor, and the muscle of mercenaries, Blair and Jodi traverse the dangers of Peru while decrypting Nicolas’s letters.

The banter that passes between Jodi and Blair as they grow closer is perfect. This exemplifies Robin Alexander’s talent. It is easy to damage a reader’s impression of a character with an imbalance of dialogue; dialogue reveals the nature of a character and too much of it creates an imbalance. But the characters Alexander has created are thoroughly fleshed-out, even the secondary characters; they are living, breathing people.

A Kiss Doesn’t Lie is a wild adventure with some romance tossed in to keep things spicy.