I just finished another novel in Allison Brennan’s series about Lucy Kincaid. After she was brutally victimized as a teen, Lucy put a wall around herself. Only after she means Sean Rogan does she fall in love and open up again, dating Sean and getting recruited with the FBI. But Lucy and Sean have complicated families — each has half a dozen siblings who work as detectives, FBI agents, mercenaries, hackers, psychologists, etc. Now that Lucy and Sean are two weeks from their wedding date, two of Sean’s siblings that we know little about show up. Makes sense for a pending wedding, right?

The Lucy Kincaid books absolutely must be read in order, and it behooves you to get your hands on the novellas published as #X.5 between some of the novels, too. Make Them Pay is book #12. Although we meet and learn about most of the Kincaid and Rogan siblings, two have been a mystery: Eden and Liam Rogan moved to Europe when Sean was about fourteen, so he barely knows them. We readers barely know them. But Eden shows up twelve days before Sean and Lucy’s wedding, and it’s Kane Rogan, Sean’s mercenary brother, and Lucy’s boss, Noah, who know this isn’t a family reunion.

Brennan’s novels must be read in order because the fallout of one bleeds into the actions and consequences of the next. In the previous book, The Lost Girls, Lucy, Sean, Kane (really, just a whole bunch of characters) take down most of a cartel selling infants on the black market born to women who are trafficked. Make Them Pay begins with Lucy and her team trying to locate around eighty infants and toddlers that were sold. Thus the title, right? Maybe. Brennan shifts away from the trafficking storyline and onto those mysterious Rogan twins, Liam and Eden.

A short flashback tells us that while the Rogan family has always been dysfunctional thanks to negligent-dreamer parents and children spaced out with many years between them who compete for attention. Their father tells Liam that while he’s not made for the military like Kane and Duke and not a genius like Sean. Liam’s a dreamer, and only a dreamer can keep alive a treasure hunt related to the Alamo in Texas that the Rogan parents have been working on most of their lives. The father gives Liam all his diaries, notes, maps, etc. only to later die with his wife in an airplane collision. Liam has clung to his father’s words, manipulating his twin, Eden, into doing whatever it takes to find the hidden treasure, which is supposedly worth a ton, but has historical significance, too. Oh, and it will make him feel special among his siblings.

Although Brennan set me up to learn more about Liam and Eden, she doesn’t really go there. Oddly, this was the first book in the series that irritated me. Once again, Lucy is kidnapped, sending Sean into fits. The mercenaries (Sean’s brother, Kane, and Lucy’s brother, Jack) go into action. We’re in Mexico, again, where it is dangerous and sweaty and drug cartels would do anything to murder the Kincaids and Rogans. Again. Drama, drama, drama. I wish Brennan would focus on Lucy solving crimes, like in early novels, compared to time constraints created by someone being kidnapped and in mortal danger.

It was a bit much for me, especially given that Brennan barely focused on who Liam and Eden are or why their parents were hunting for treasure all those years ago. Make Them Pay was a great opportunity to take readers back and learn more about the Rogan family when Sean was still a young teen.

Part of the problem is Brennan appears to write herself into a corner. Liam feels left out amidst his talented siblings, or so we’re told. Eden is a thief and master manipulator, or so we’re told. Instead of creating two new, unique characters, readers experience Eden and Liam through the omniscient narrator, smoothing down the characters until the sound like all the other characters, and the result is a lack of emotional complexity or believability. That classic case of telling instead of showing.

Even a character like Kane Rogan, whom I’ve grown to appreciate in this series, was sanded down. Now that he’s in his forties and been seriously injured so many times on rescue operations, the temptation to settle down increases. Although he’s loved the photojournalist from the previous novel, Siobhan, for many years, he’s evasive. In Make Them Pay, Kane obsesses over how sexy Siobhan is, how she is a “siren” or like a “light” for him. When she’s around, he has two thoughts: run away or throw her to the ground and have sex with her. Since when has Brennan reduced one of her main heroes to an animal? Even if I am to believe that he wants Siobhan just because she’s sexy (and I don’t), Kane wouldn’t settle down and leave his work for that. It doesn’t fit with his character.

Brennan saves the novel with an emotional ending, and I’m eager to read the next book (#12.5). I’m just hoping this isn’t a sign that Brennan got worn out with her series and started phoning it in. Near the end of the series, which ended up being 18 novels, Brennan wrote on Goodreads, “I felt that I had given her and Sean a really strong story arc over 17 books and just didn’t know where to take them without re-hashing old ground.” So, we’re not there yet, but I’m seeing little signs. If you want a really funny review of what the problems with the series are, check out this review by Ariel on Goodreads.