Review of Cynthia and Dan

Postby Massimo Luciani »

[Following is a volunteer review of "Cynthia and Dan" by Dorothy May Mercer.]
Book Cover
4 out of 4 stars
Share This Review


Cynthia and Dan: Cyber War by Dorothy May Mercer is a novel that mixes romance and thriller. When a drone flies near the White House, Washington D.C. gets locked down causing a huge traffic jam. Cynthia Patterson is the chief of security on Senator Mike McBride's staff, so a potential danger to the President gets her attention. However, stuck on the road, she struggles to go back to her office. By chance, she meets Sky Eastman, a charming and mysterious man. They have dinner together and there's an immediate attraction between them that leads to them having sex.

The next day, Cynthia has to deal with her boyfriend Dan but what can she tell him? The complications in Cynthia's private life add to the worry that something ominous might happen in Washington D.C. if the drone flight was just the first attempt to attack the White House. Cynthia teams up with her brother Glenn, who runs a high-tech private investigation agency, to wage cyber war on the enemies of the USA.

Romance is not my thing, so I wasn't keen on picking a book in which the romantic element was important. However, I was intrigued by the cyber war storyline, as it's something that has become increasingly common in recent years. In the end, reading it was the right decision, as this novel can be appreciated for different reasons.

The romantic element is still my least favorite of the novel due to my personal taste. Other readers might consider it the best part of the novel. To be fair, Cynthia's love story is not cheesy and includes complications coming from her love triangle with Sky and her boyfriend Dan. There are some very practical notions concerning contraception with even an appendix that contains medical information about that subject and abortion. There's a further development of that issue, as Sky was raised a Catholic and reflects on that point of view concerning sex and pregnancies.

As I imagined, the parts of the novel about the cyber war were my favorite. Cyber war used to be a subject of science fiction novels not long ago while now it seems to have become a type of attack widely used by many nations, often in unofficial wars. Dorothy May Mercer used very little jargon to describe cyber war activities, so you don't need to be computer geeks to understand what's going on.

I think that the intertwinings between Cynthia's private and work life are well handled obtaining a novel that is funny with a plot that mixes drama and comedy and offers various twists. It has a couple of pages that are explicitly marked as R Rated, as they contain some descriptions of intercourse. There are just a few errors that didn't influence my enjoyment or my judgment, so I happily rate it 4 out of 4 stars. For the mix of genres, I recommend Cynthia and Dan: Cyber War to lovers of romance or stories about the fight against terrorism based on the use of state-of-the-art technologies.

******
Cynthia and Dan
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon