In His Keeping

In His Keeping is the second book in Maya Banks's Slow Burn series, the contemporary romantic suspense project that has been one of her ongoing franchises for several years. The series is built around the Devereaux Security Services agency and the elite security operatives who work there, with each book in the series focusing on one operative and the woman whose situation pulls him into a personal involvement that complicates his usual professional approach.

This novel turns to Beau Devereaux, the eldest son of the Devereaux family who runs the security firm, and Ari Rochester, a young woman whose unusual telekinetic gifts have made her a target for a shadowy organization that wants to use her abilities for their own purposes. The supernatural element gives the book a slightly different flavor from the rest of the Slow Burn series, with the security and protection plot of the conventional romantic suspense genre weaving together with the science fiction tinged elements of Ari's gifts. Maya Banks handles the combination with care, treating the supernatural material with the kind of internal consistency that makes it feel grounded rather than as a convenient deus ex machina.

Maya Banks writes contemporary romantic suspense with the kind of emotional intensity her readers know her for. Her sex scenes are explicit and frequent, but they are almost always in service of relationships that have weight to them, and her readers come back to her in part for the way her heat scenes carry actual emotional information rather than just physical action. The Devereaux family and the wider security firm cast give the series the kind of recurring world that her audience returns to.

For longtime Slow Burn fans, In His Keeping is a satisfying entry that develops the Devereaux family across the wider series. For new readers, the series can be picked up at most points but starting with Keep Me Safe gives the strongest sense of the wider Devereaux universe and the relationships that drive the connected books.

Readers who enjoy J.D. Robb's In Death series, Lora Leigh's Breeds and Elite Ops series, or the romantic suspense end of Karen Rose's catalogue will find familiar territory in Maya Banks's work. In His Keeping is a comfortable read for fans of high heat romantic suspense.