The Book: Witness on the Run by Susan Cliff
The Particulars: Harlequin Romantic Suspense, 2019, Out of Print, Available Digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I had a long-neglected ARC of this on my Kindle. Also, fun fact, Cliff is a pseudonym for Jill Sorenson, who wrote several single title romantic suspense novels that I enjoyed.

The Review: Just look at that cover goodness. What can you expect from this story? Just look at the cover. For once an art department in Romancelandia totally nailed it. There was a lot about this book that screamed Wendy Catnip. I'm a sucker for a heroine in peril story and this one features working class characters. The hero is also an Ice Road Trucker - which gives the story a survivalist "couple against nature" vibe. Unfortunately I didn't love this story as much as I truly wanted to.

Tala Walker finally gathered up the courage to flee her abusive husband in Canada, a matter complicated by the fact that he's a cop. After being on the move for a while, she finally has settled (under an assumed name) in Middle Of Nowhere, Alaska. She's a waitress at a diner that mainly caters to truckers and cops (which she's not wild about - but the owner gives them free coffee and she keeps her head down). She arrives to work one morning to find her boss sleeping off a drunk in his office, so she's alone to open in. In walks a cop (free coffee) and shortly thereafter three rough looking characters. They eat, they leave, and Tala decides to take out the garbage - and that's when she sees one of the rough looking guys shooting one of his companions. The cop gets irritated and tells the thugs to go back into the diner to do further "clean up." Tala, not being stupid, sees this as a threat and takes off. Safety comes in the form of the nearby truck stop and stowing away on a big rig.

The driver of said big rig is Cameron "Cam" Hughes. He knows Tala from the diner, having eaten there in the past and gotten his head turned. This makes him uncomfortable because he's in Alaska to be alone darling. He's a widower, a former cop, with a healthy White Knight Complex and a heaping side guilt. When his wife died he ran away to Alaska to become an Ice Road Trucker. When he finds Tala stowing away on his truck he's not pleased. Besides the fact that she's pretty and tempting? Oh, the minor detail that she's obviously running from something and not giving him the entire truth.

What follows is Tala traveling with Cam on the ice road, even though it could cost him his job, and the bad guys lurking around every snow drift.

The story got off to a rocky start because the early chapters felt spoon-fed to me. I felt like the author was "telling" me the set-up instead of unfolding it through the characters feelings and actions. But the writing did smooth out for me after a bit, and things picked up once Tala stows away on Cam's truck.

Cam is classic emotionally wounded hero. He's still hung up over his wife's untimely death (she was killed in an accident) and is the sort of guy who would rush into a burning building to save a family's pet cat - so even though he knows Tala isn't telling him everything his White Knight Complex kicks into overdrive. This was my main issue with him. I would have hog-tied Tala until she told me the truth or else left her freezing butt behind in a snow bank until I got the truth out of her - but then we wouldn't have a story.

Tala was OK, I guess. I understood her distrust of law enforcement given her past (besides the abusive cop she's still married to, she's First Nations) and she immediately pegs Cam as the kind of guy who would demand going to the authorities (oh, little does she know...). So she tap-dances around the truth a lot. She's also a person whose crisis response is flight - so she runs. A lot. After a while I was not only exhausted, but annoyed.

The lines between Harlequin Romantic Suspense and Harlequin Intrigue have always felt murky to me, but someone once explained it to me that Romantic Suspense tends to be more "romance forward." That's certainly the case here, with Cam getting distracted and wanting to boink Tala even though he knows she's not being entirely forthcoming and Tala starting to not feel dead below the waist. Of course this also means the suspense is kind of meh. Not much is done about the murder, other than to say yes this guy was shot and yes Tala witnessed it. Fleshing out a motive? Not so much (we get one but not a lot of detail). This will probably satisfy 95% of romance readers, but if you're a suspense reader (like yours truly) it comes off as a bit of a Nothing Burger.

I'm left with a story I read fairly quickly but that didn't rise up past a lukewarm response. I wasn't left out in the cold, but I also didn't feel like I was in a house on fire.

Final Grade = C+

I tried and failed to finish this book multiple times. The writing fell flat and the characters just didn't connect with me the way I was hoping. I was hoping for more immediate action with a shorter book.

I did not finish this book, as I struggle with violence. This just did not work for me, but I appreciate the opportunity to read it early.

Sorry I hadn't time to read this one before it was archived. I'm in college and have a big workload this year.

Susan Cliff is a new-to-me author, and the book blurb I read, with a very different type of romantic suspense hero and heroine, piqued my interest enough to request an advance reader copy of this novel. While I didn't absolutely love it, it certainly was quite a good, original, and entertaining read, and it gets a 3.5 star rating.

We first meet the heroine, Tala Walker, a First Nations Canadian (their version of our Native American), who is the woman on the run. She's the wife of a law officer, Duane, a violent man who became both physically and mentally abusive since their marriage. After an especially severe beating, Tala fled with just the clothes on her back, and has been running, hiding and working in a hole-in-wall diner in Willow, Alaska, where most of her non-local customers are truckers. The owner of the diner is also a drinker, and when Tala arrives one morning to to find him in his office, sleeping off what he drank the night before, as the only waitress, she opens for the day. As the novel opens, Tala is serving coffee to 3 men, one a policeman and two other men who look like truckers but whose behavior seems odd to her--seldom do truckers ever leave food on their plates. She quickly goes out the back door to dump trash. The dumpster is enclosed by fencing to keep bears away, and then she suddenly hears a gunshot. She peeks through the fence to find that the officer she served has his gun out, there's a victim is on the ground, and then she overhears the officer tell his accomplice to go back inside the diner to take care of things. Tala knows that he means take care of her, and she's terrified. She's not warmly dressed--her coat, boots, purse and ID (albeit stolen) are inside, but she manages to evade the gunman as she flees across the road to a truck-stop, where she stows away between the cab and trailer of a truck getting ready to leave, and hangs on in the hope that she wasn't spotted by the either trucker or the shooter, who did see her flee and was following her. The truck in question belongs to Cameron Hughes, the hero.

Cameron is not your typical romantic suspense lawman hero. He used to be a police officer, but 3 years earlier, he lost his wife, Jenny. Devastated, broken, and grieving, he needs to try to outrun his grief, and not only does he become a long-haul trucker, he becomes an ice-road trucker in Alaska, a very dangerous and deadly occupation indeed. Miles down the road from the truck stop, he hears a noise in the back of his cab, and when he pulls over to investigate, he finds Tala, nearly frozen to death, in just her waitress uniform, manages to get her out of her hiding place, and brings her inside the heated cab to hopefully thaw her out and save her from hypothermia. Wanting to know more about the beautiful woman he rescued, he's surprised by how evasive she is, and, as a former law officer, he wants to know why she risked her life, why she's running, and Tala isn't saying much. But during their long trip north to drop off his cargo in Prudhoe Bay, he intends to find out more about her, why she's running, and from who.

As the miles go by, these two characters slowly begin to share the reasons why they are running, but neither is really ready to fully open up about it. Tala doesn't trust the police for good reason, her husband was a law officer, and now Tala also suspects the shooter and his accomplice are after her too. She's been running, hiding and living under several assumed identities for some time. Although she recognizes Cameron (Cam) from the diner, although he's an attractive man, and she's grateful that he saved her, she's not looking to attach herself to another man any time soon. Cam isn't looking for love either, but he's kept his diner visits to a minimum ever since he realized that he was attracted to Tala. It's an interesting and suspenseful set-up for what amounts to a chase and rescue romance novel, with danger everywhere, and a very good HEA ending.

Told in alternating narration, something I very much enjoy, with flashbacks to each of their pasts, I expected to become emotionally involved with these two characters, but for some strange reason, although the novel was interesting, well-paced, at times sexy, steamy and exciting, I never did become emotionally invested in these two characters and their story, even though I can't quite figure out whether the reason for my detachment was the lack of emotion in the way the novel was written, or simply the way I perceived these two characters to be. I found that I liked Cam a bit more than I liked Tala, but neither character seemed fully realized to me.

All in all, I found this novel to be well-written, suspenseful, original and intermittently exciting, but in the end, I liked it well enough but didn't love it. If domestic violence, gun violence, or graphic sex are not your cup of tea, you might want to pass this one by. However, If you're looking for a slightly different sort of romantic suspense read, containing all of the aforementioned, I think you'll probably enjoy this one.

As stated, I voluntarily requested an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

Witness on the Run by Susan Cliff This book immediately opened as a page turner but sizzled out for me. I didn't connect with this book the way I was hoping. It turned into a DNF.

This book was decently solid at 3 stars. I did have a good chuckle when the town I grew up by was mentioned, though I would warn authors to do a bit of research on a place before plunking it in a book.

I do like that the main lady, Tala Walker, is a smart, self sufficient, indigenous woman who is proud of her heritage. She has beautiful tan skin, dark hair, and a beautiful body (of course). Not the regular blonde, blue eyed, smart until it's inconvenient to the plotline, big boobed, small waisted women you normally get. Tala gets herself out of trouble more times than Cam does. In fact, she saves Cam in the end. YAY!!!!!

Cam (Cameron), is a classic, big, strong, built like a lumberjack, happens to have law enforcement background and connections man with a huge soft heart and a tragic background story (wounded man needing healing, anyone?). He wandered out to the freezing North to drive the ice after his life took a tragic turn. Big softie that he is, he doesn't hesitate to help Tala when he finds her nearly frozen on his rig.

Let's start with my home town. Stony Plain is NOT a city. That said, Edmonton is roughly 35-40 minutes away (depending on the conditions, of course). So it’s not a place people regularly drive to when going out shopping or anything like that. The city of Spruce Grove is 2 minutes down the highway and has most of your shopping needs if Stony doesn’t.

Edmonton has 0ver 953,000 people living in its boundaries. Equating Edmonton to New York is laughable (New York City has 8.6 million people in it). I know a lady who moved here from New York and this place is piddly small in comparison to what she's used to. So while moving up North to the bush country would be different than living in Stony, it wouldn't completely unbearable…unless Tala's mother loves shopping more than she loves nature (entirely possible I admit).

That out of the way, the only other issue I had with this book is the perfect romance genre bow that tied this book altogether. What I mean is the following: Tala manages to stand up to the man who abused her and he turns out to be a bit of a pushover (I was disappointed). All the bad guys are conveniently killed off. Love blooms and they are confessing it after only knowing each other for less than two weeks. Other than the brother, both families are totally welcoming, and one even goes so far as to recommend marriage. Cam finds a job without looking. They find a place to live, without looking. It is almost perfectly located right where they want to be. You get my point, yeah? It's a very pretty, and standard, bow for a romance novel.

The romance and love-making. The romance itself is fine. Cam being a big protector and Tala being grateful for it. Standard romance novel stuff ensues. About halfway through things heat up. You get one round of an all-night love-making session, which is neither mind-blowing or long despite what the characters in the book think. Don't get me wrong, these two are like rabbits after that whenever they are in a hotel room alone together. But it is merely mentioned. So if you are thinking about reading this book specifically for that, I would say it's pretty tame.

In Conclusion

This book is a bit of a rare gem. The book gained points for the leading lady and the writing. It's leading lady is a smart, beautiful, indigenous woman, which is not something you encounter too often. It's hard to find a book with a woman in it that doesn't turn into an idiot at some point to further the plot.
Cam is a standard hot, wounded from the past, softhearted man found readily available in many romance books.
The actual suspense bit was a bit lacking, but the mystery of the who and why was there. Mostly because the killers came out of left field. The romance was a standard under 2 week affair that magically seems to be working out in the future. The love-making was 95% glossed over with one scene that was fairly short and...standard (for the reader), but mind blowing, best ever for the characters.

All in all I liked this book. It was well written. It flowed. The author tried to add in some extra suspense. Tala is self-sufficient and doesn't suddenly lose her intelligence in a plot convenient place. Big points for that!

I’d been looking forward to the next Susan Cliff romantic suspense thanks to enjoying her previous one, Navy SEAL Rescue. The locales were fascinating; characters, complex; and the politics, respectful of time and place. I expected and found no less in Witness On the Run. (And who can resist that marvelous cover? Which, BTW, reflects the characters exactly as they should be, a rarity in romance, sadly.) Witness opened with the same acute danger and desperate circumstances as Rescue, with Alaskan cold and ice in place of Afghani heat and dust; a grief-stricken widower and First Nations spousal abuse survivor heroine in place of a disillusioned SEAL and determined Assyrian-Christian heroine. In both cases, the heroines have reasons to run and the heroes are entangled in their brave flights from danger and evil. Cliff renders the settings with sensitivity to their politics and captures the climate and conditions with realistic, compelling detail.

When Witness opens, heroine Tala Walker is waitressing in Willow, Alaska, and keeping a low profile, having escaped her abusive husband, Duane. Her diner-owner boss is snoring away when Tala is witness to a murder, in which a cop is implicated! Given her past and the prejudice First Nations people face with police forces, Tala hides away in a nearby rig rather than contacting police. That’s where ice-road trucker Cameron “Cam” Hughes finds her. This is the start of their running-from-bad-guys, knuckle-biting trip across Alaskan ice roads. Along the way, while confronting danger from elements and men, Tala and Cam, at best wary of love thanks to their pasts, learn from and about each other, sharing the grief, loss, and disillusionment of their past relationships and estrangements from their families and slowly learning to trust and love again.

I was disappointed I didn’t enjoy Witness On the Run as much as I did Navy SEAL Rescue. I kept reading, hoping it would get better and because I appreciated Cliff’s ideas so much more than I did her writing. That was my main problem with and why I tolerated rather than relishing it. Cliff tends to write in clipped, staccato, declarative sentences, even while she tells a compelling story and draws unusual characters. I loved that the characters were working class; their ambitions, modest; that they loved the land and saw its beauty, that they needed to overcome difficult, ordinary pasts. I loved that their romance was slow burn and that they got to know each other in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back trust-mistrust rhythm.

What I didn’t love was the telling of it and it ruined my enjoyment. I read Witness On the Run with a divided mind: on the one hand, nodding at Cliff’s ideas and appreciating her creation of politically interesting and unusual characters; on the other hand, growing impatient and then frowiningly critical of her rendition, nothing ever coming alive thanks to that tell-not-show prose, though I think that too simplistic terminology. Cliff is not a middle school student writing a bad short story, but my expectations and anticipation after Navy SEAL Rescue augmented my not-enjoyment. In the end, Miss Austen and I would say that Witness On the Run offered “tolerable comfort,” Mansfield Park.

Susan Cliff’s Witness On the Run is published by Harlequin Books. It was released on December 4th and may be found at your preferred vendor. I received an e-galley from Harlequin, via Netgalley.

Tala is already on the run when she comes across another situation that leaves her running for her life once again. Cameron Hughes isn't happy to find a stow away on his truck and it clear shes not telling him everything when it comes to why she running but he can't help but want to protect her.

Dang Tala is pretty unlucky just when she manages to find some type of normal for herself after running in the first place the comes across another situation that forces her to leave. I loved that there was so much going on from the beginning of the book. Theres the questioning whether or not she'll finally be caught not just one situation but two. Then theres the romance brewing between Tala and Cameron and he has his own demons hes trying to race. Its clear from the job he works that he's a risk taker and what he does could end up being the very last thing he does as a ice trucker. Theres just so much going on that'll keep the readers hooked and I enjoyed this book so much.

I am not sure how to rate this book to be honest with you. One the one hand, it started out very slow for me because I didn't get the plot until the end. And while I found the characters slightly interesting, they didn't hook me in as normally they would when I am reading a story. And the whole Dalton occupation? This reader was not too fond of it. However, all that aside, it is not a bad read. Many will like it. It just didn't hold my attention....Loved the cover though!

I'm fascinated by books set in the harsh wilderness of Alaska, so Susan Cliff's Witness on the Run seemed like the perfect book for me. It features a slow-burn romance between interesting leads and a healthy dose of suspense. It's not a perfect book, but I enjoyed it just the same.

Tala Walker has been on the run for the past year. Staying one step ahead of her abusive husband isn't easy, but she is determined to evade him for as long as she possibly can. When the book opens, she's working as a waitress at a diner and it seems like she's safe for the time being - but everything changes when she steps outside to empty the trash and just happens to witness a murder. The killer knows she can identify him, and so Tala is forced to flee once again, and she enlists the help of trucker Cameron Hughes.

Cameron is still grieving the tragic death of his wife, and life on the road suits him just fine. Working as an ice road trucker in the wilds of Alaska is incredibly dangerous, but Cameron has fully embraced the danger as a way to cope with his soul-crushing grief. He isn't exactly keen to help Tala escape those on her trail, but there's something about her that speaks to him in spite of his reservations.

Both Tala and Cameron are keeping dangerous secrets, so their alliance seems almost incomprehensible to the reader. But as time passes, these two deeply damaged individuals begin to let down their guards and soon, it becomes clear to them both that trusting one another is the only way they can stay safe. It doesn't happen overnight, something I definitely appreciated. Ms. Cliff does a stellar job portraying the inner turmoil both Cameron and Tala face as they slowly give into their feelings for one another.

I was really pleased by the balance between the romance and the suspense. Both are given just enough page time, and I never felt one aspect of the story was overwhelming the other. There were a few times toward the end of the novel when I felt the actions of the villains were a little over the top, but I was able to suspend my disbelief and go with the flow of the story.

One of the best parts of this book was the beautiful word pictures the author painted of Alaska. It's a place I've never visited in person, but the author's vivid depictions of the setting made me feel like I was there. She manages to capture both the stark beauty and the unforgiving nature of the land so well.

I would have liked Ms. Cliff to have spent a little more time developing the pasts of her characters. We get enough information to understand what's happening, but certain aspects of the back story felt incomplete and I found myself left with a few questions. It's almost as if Ms. Cliff expected me to understand the motivations of her characters even though she hadn't fully explained them, something I obviously wasn't able to do.

I'm happy to recommend Witness on the Run to readers looking for a solid romantic suspense story with an unusual setting. It's a quick, engrossing read that manages to be memorable in spite of its flaws, and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

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Witness on the Run
By Susan Cliff
Tala Walker is hiding. First from an abusive husband and then from a killer. Why won’t she go to the police? Her husband is a cop and she witnessed a man being murdered by a killer and a cop. She doesn’t trust the police. After she witnesses the murder, she goes on the run again. This time she hitches a ride with Cameron Hughes, an ice road trucker. Cameron knows who Tala is because she was the waitress in the diner he would stop at. He would never approach her because he wasn’t over his dead wife. As Tala flees and ends up traveling with Cameron, his protective instincts kick in. Both share secrets and as they spend more time together, Tala realizes that Cameron is not like other men. Unfortunately, he has a secret, he used to be a cop. He is afraid to tell Tala as his feelings for her grow because he knows how she feels about police officers. Danger awaits around every corner, whether it is from the conditions on the road or the killers that are searching for Tala. Through it all, will their love be strong enough to get past all of the hurdles in front of them?
I found it interesting that the hero of this story is a trucker, not your typical hero. As these two characters begin to reveal more of their secrets as they drive, you see how they begin to learn to trust one another. Soon deep feelings begin to form. Cameron takes it slow with Tala as he struggles with his feelings. She also learns that she can trust and depend on Cam. I enjoyed this story. I liked how it took a while for Cameron and Tala to trust each other. They didn’t automatically begin a relationship because they were in close quarters, it slowly developed. I also like how Tala gained back her self confidence because of Cameron’s belief in her. There was a lot of suspense and action in this story. It moved along quickly as we see the characters change as the story progresses.This was an enjoyable read.

The beginning was unsatisfying because we did not know the reason events unfolded as they did until nearly the end of the book, but otherwise this was an enjoyable, character-driven story in a new and interesting setting. The main characters were well-drawn and sympathetic, though I could wish some of the background was a little better developed.

“Witness on the Run” by Susan Cliff was not a favorite of mine, to say the least. I found the characters to be shallow and not believable. I did like that the theme of an ice trucker on the Dalton was exciting and that the story did have moments of excitement, but all in all, I was not glad that I’d read the book. I would rather have spent my time on something more worthwhile.