THE COST OF HONOR

The lone man in a covert sisterhood of vigilantes nearly drowns in the waters of Dominica only to be rescued by a beautiful entrepreneur with secrets of her own.

The third installment of Muñoz Stewart’s (The Price of Grace, 2019, etc.) romantic suspense series about a secret society of highly trained heroes called the League of Warrior Women picks up exactly where the second left off, which may confuse new readers. Tony Parish had an abusive and violent childhood until his adoption into a league of global justice warriors gave him a family and a purpose. But when he broke the strict family code to save a life, he was forced to fake his own death and flee to the lush, mountainous Caribbean island of Dominica. There, he meets Honor Silva, a local businesswoman with her own family mysteries to untangle. With money inherited from her movie star mother, Honor and her grandfather run “Loco for Cocoa,” a cocoa farm, lodge, and agro-touring business. In a familiar plot device, an outrageously high offer to buy the property is followed by a series of “accidents.” Tony uses his special set of skills to help Honor get to the bottom of the mystery while trying to evade capture and punishment by the League. To make room for a large cast of characters and Tony’s and Honor’s parallel suspense plots, the novel shortchanges the romance, telling rather than showing: “She’s never felt this way about a man. She’d thought it was a myth, this type of attraction—the kind that drove away doubt and common sense.” Typical of the series, graphic violence and explicit sex punctuate talky scenes about the meaning of family, loyalty, and justice.

A solid romantic suspense novel in a series that should be read in order.