Breaking The Honor Code is the second book I've read in Stanalei Fletcher's Northstar Security series - you can read my review of Proving Ground here. While loosely connected, each book is absolutely readable as a standalone; you don't get characters from previous books popping up all over the place to confuse the main plot and the romance between the two leads.
Allison is Northstar's 'cyborg queen', a brilliant, geeky young woman who genuinely loves her job. When Northstar receives a threat warning about her absence, Sloan Cartland, the firm's profiler, is sent to find her and ensure her safety. A hacker targeting Northstar plants a trail implicating Allison and Sloan is alerted; he has to make the call to trust her, or not.
Spoiler alert; Sloan makes the wrong call. I was absolutely shocked. Due to a plot-convenient power cut he knew - he had absolute hard evidence - that she COULDN'T be the hacker, because she had no computer access at the time when the hack took place. And yet five minutes later he apparently completely forgot about that fact and decided to suspect her, with absolutely no grounds whatsoever.
Because this IS a romance novel and it has to have a happy ending, of course they get past it and everything turns out all right in the end, but I can't begin to imagine how. If I were in Allison's place, Sloan's lack of faith in me when he had clear evidence exonerating me would have spelled the end of the relationship before it even got started.
Breaking The Honor Code is well written, with a clever and thoroughly researched plot, but the failure of the hero to behave in a heroic manner towards the heroine means I can't give it any more than three stars.
Breaking The Honor Code is available for pre-order now and will be released on May 31.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through ReadingAlley.