There is something wonderfully unsettling about a woman knowing she's being watched and the man watching her knowing that she knows. Nobody is admitting anything, nobody is putting a stop to it, and somehow that strange little standoff is only the beginning of what Hailey is about to get herself into.
They Know If You've Been Bad or Good by Alta Hensley
Series: Naughty or Nice #3
Genres: Dark Romance, Holiday Romance, Menage Romance
About the Book:

There’s no escaping the holiday spirit in this dark, forced-proximity, why choose, Christmas stalker romance, the sequel to Alta Hensley’s New York Times bestselling He Knows When You’re Awake!
Stalkin’ around the Christmas tree…

Hailey Parker thought she had outrun her past. As the assistant to a successful jewelry designer, she’s started a new life in New York City, and may even have a new boyfriend to cozy up with this holiday. Her boss’s security guard, Knox, is a man of few words, but his obvious obsession calls to the darkest parts of Hailey’s imagination.

Then, her ex-boyfriend—and ex-partner-in-crime—shows up outside Hailey’s Brooklyn apartment. Liam explains that their past has caught up with them: the mobster they robbed five years ago has tracked them down. If they hope to escape with their lives, they must return to the remote Canadian wilderness where Hailey hid the priceless stolen diamond.

But a very different fate is awaiting them in the frigid landscape. Someone else entirely is pulling the strings, an unhinged billionaire who has a dark fascination with Hailey and Liam—and with the protective, ex-military boyfriend who has tracked Hailey all the way to the Northwest Territories.

Imprisoned together in a luxurious cabin and with a lethal ticking time bomb, Hailey, Liam, and Knox have no choice but to work together to outwit their captor. As a winter storm approaches—and simmering tensions between them reach a breaking point—escape starts to seem impossible…but what if everything they need is right there in the cabin?

Tropes:🎄 Christmas Romance 💕 Why Choose 🎖️ Military Romance 👀 Stalker Romance 🎯 One Last Job 🏠 Forced Proximity 🔥 M/M/F Romance ❤️‍🩹 Second-Chance Romance 🛏️ Only One Bed

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Other books from this Author Kings and Sinners

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This is my second book by Alta Hensley, but my first in this series. I didn’t realize when I started that it was actually the third book, and thankfully that didn’t matter at all. I never felt like I was missing information or trying to catch up with relationships from previous books. This one worked perfectly well for me as a standalone.

The beginning had me immediately. Hailey knows she has a stalker. Even better, Knox knows that she knows he’s watching her. He originally started keeping an eye on her because he wanted to make sure she was safe, but somewhere along the way, that reason stopped explaining just how much attention he was paying her.

Neither of them really confronts what he’s doing, which creates this bizarre tension between them that I loved. She’s aware of him. He’s aware that she’s aware of him. They’re just going to continue with their lives while Knox keeps tabs on her apparently.

Sure. Totally normal behavior. Knox was easily one of my favorite parts of the book. Yes, the man is stalking Hailey, so we’re grading him on the morally gray romance curve here, but I liked the way he handled things once everything was out in the open. He doesn’t make the decision for her. Hailey gets the space to decide what she wants, and that made a difference for me.

There were moments when I wanted him to quit hovering around the edges and just take the leap because I could see what kind of partner he could be for her. Hailey and I had a slightly more complicated relationship.

I really liked her at the beginning. Somewhere around the middle, she started making choices that had me questioning her a little more. There were several points when I knew exactly what I would have done and it was definitely not what Hailey did. By about sixty percent, though, she had won me back.

A lot of her decisions make more sense when you consider the situation she’s actually in. It’s easy for me to sit comfortably with my Kindle and tell this woman how she should handle stalking, kidnapping, morally questionable men, and everything else being thrown at her. Hailey doesn’t exactly have the luxury of calmly considering all her options.

Then this book threw something at me that I was absolutely not expecting.

Why choose.

I somehow missed that part going into the book, and I’m glad I did because discovering where the relationship was heading was so much fun. The tension between the three of them worked incredibly well. More importantly, the relationship didn’t feel like someone had simply been added because the book needed another person to make the romance hotter. There was something interesting happening between all three characters, and I wanted to see how they were going to make this arrangement work.

And yes, it is hot.

This is definitely not one of those books where you spend 300 pages waiting for someone to finally kiss. Alta Hensley knew what kind of book she was writing. We have stalking, kidnapping, morally gray behavior, plenty of spice, and some increasingly wild situations.

The story happening outside the romance was a little more uneven for me. There were parts where I was completely invested and others where things became outlandish enough that I had to quit asking questions and go along for the ride. Once I did that, I had a much better time.

Although this is technically a Christmas book, I wouldn’t pick it up expecting Christmas to dominate the story. There are some fun holiday moments and cute market scenes, but Christmas mostly provides the backdrop. The stalking, kidnapping, romance, and increasingly complicated relationship are doing considerably more work than Santa.

This ended up being one of those fast reads where I kept wondering what ridiculous thing was going to happen next. Just when I thought I understood the direction Alta Hensley was taking, another twist or relationship development changed things again.

Apparently all I needed for a slightly unhinged holiday read was a stalker, a kidnapping, a surprise why choose relationship, and enough spice to keep everybody warm through Christmas.