Capture the Sun is the third and final book in Jessie Mihalik's space opera romance series Starlight's Shadow. The series, which began with Hunt the Stars (Review Here) and continued with Eclipse the Moon (Review Here), features two sets of teammates who used to be on opposite sides of an interstellar wars - a team of humans led by Captain Tavi who now would like to run just an ordinary freighter job...mostly and a team of Valoffs - human-like but telepathic (amidst other psychic gifts) beings - who used to belong to their own military. Naturally when the two groups get involved with a conspiracy on both the human and Valoff sides to try to reignite the war, they find themselves having to work together to try to stop it....and in the process, a bunch of them find themselves attracted to their formerly hated enemies....And so book 1 featured Captain Tavi falling for the telekinetic former general Torran, book 2 featured hacker Kee getting involved with extremely mentally skilled Varro, and well this book follows thief (excuse me, "retrieval specialist") Lexi and teleporter Nilo. The books don't really deal with much more than winks to serious themes, but like Mihalik's earlier series, they're a lot of fun, and the romances can get extremely steamy (with some very hot sex scenes, even if this never quite gets to the level of erotic romance).
Capture the Sun follows a similar formula and works pretty well for it - new protagonist Lexi is extremely easy to like and follow as she deals with her trust issues, her PTSD, and her absolute desire for Nilo which she desperately wishes was not a thing because she can't trust him not to betray her again. I complained in my review of book 2 that the sex scenes there didn't live up to book 1, and well I think this book kind of hits a middle ground: there's a few hot scenes (the hottest honestly happens psychically), but there's not as much description in some of the sex scenes as you might expect and there's a couple of fades to black that omit descriptions at all...but it's still enough that it should be satisfying for most sex-loving romance fans. And the space opera plot and the characters still work really well for the most part. I was looking for an enjoyable romance to read here, and I got exactly what I was looking for.
Plot Summary:
Lexi Bowen is a "retrieval specialist" (aka a thief) who thrives taking jobs that involve recovering rare artifacts for rich assholes in both human and Valovian space. Of course, her former crew's actions in stopping a conspiracy to reignite the galactic war between the Valoffs and Human forces, has made it extremely risky to be in Valovian space, but a rich job on the capital world of Valovia is too much for Lexi to resist. If the job is a trap, well, Lexi is pretty confident in her abilities to get out of it.
Unfortunately, when the job does turn out to be a trap, Lexi finds herself unhappily rescued by Nilo Shoren, a Valovian teleporter and rival who Lexi still fumes at for having stolen one of her jobs out from under her. And for being someone who she finds almost physically irresistible, even though she just knows she certainly can't trust him...especially not with her fragile heart.
But when Lexi and Nilo's former crews go missing in Valovian space, the two of them are forced to work together to save them and prevent the conspiracy from reigniting a war. And that shared mission will bring them together in ways full of passion....and danger...such that it threatens to shatter Lexi's heart...if her body can survive it.
You now a certain amount of what you're getting with Capture the Sun - our protagonists are going to have to work and fight together to save the day and their friends and are going to get irresistibly attracted to each other and into steamy situations in the process. The book takes a slightly different approach to its protagonists - whereas Tavi/Torran were former enemies who resisted the idea of their attraction until it was inevitable and Kee and Varro were clearly attracted but Kee too shy and Varro too slow to admit the attraction, Lexi and Nilo are fully aware of their attraction from the beginning...and even willing to engage in sort of a one night stand. The struggle for them is the fact that well, Lexi is afraid that Nilo is going to betray her again and refuses to open herself up...and Nilo is far too willing to sacrifice himself for her than just admit it all and to try to clear up misunderstandings that have hurt them both.
And this works very well - both romantically and in forming the underlying core of the space opera plot. The latter never really gets more than just being a functional part of this story - there's never really crazy suspense about whether the good guys will win, just about how, and the story never really deals with any themes other than wars and fascists bad, freedom and peace good - but it functions well enough to keep you intrigued and enjoying it all. And the romance between the two, as well as glimpses of the ongoing romances between side characters in this series who have and haven't had books of their own, work pretty well. The romance uses a number of classic tropes but does so very well, with them generally paying off pretty well.
One thing I'll note is that my complaint about the last book was that the book's sex scenes - which Mihalik has done really really hot and steamy in the past, including in book 1 of this series - were kind of lacking and this book is a bit better in this regard. There's a few sex scenes where the book fades to black rather than picture, but there's a few descriptive ones that are pretty hot and one telepathic only one that is really hot...even if none of them live up to the hotness of book 1. This is of course the most subjective type of opinion I can offer lol, but it's a critique I'd like to make....although the use of teleportation in some of these scenes is highly enjoyable.
But in all seriousness, Capture the Sun is an excellent romance novel and conclusion to this trilogy and I would definitely recommend it if you've read the other books.
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