Take Books in Order

The Take books revolve around Ana Sinclair, a young crime analyst whose life is already complicated before the danger really starts. She lives and works alongside Jake Bennett, the older detective she cannot stop wanting. That would be hard enough on its own. The real problem is that Jake is also supposed to marry her mother. Jaimie Roberts uses that setup to build a series that feels part taboo romance, part police thriller, and part family disaster waiting to happen.

The outside threat arrives quickly. A serial killer known as the Blonde Killer is hunting women, and Ana becomes more than a bystander to the case. Because Jake is one of the people trying to stop the killer, the books keep pushing work, desire, and fear into the same small space. There is no clean line between the investigation and Ana's private life. When things get bad at home, they also get bad at work, and vice versa. Jake's son Matthew also becomes part of the emotional mess, which gives the story a makeshift family angle on top of everything else.

That setting matters. These books are built around police offices, late-night calls, tense house scenes, and the feeling that someone is always either watching or hiding something. Ana is not written as a passive passenger in the story. She has her own history, her own secrets, and her own reasons for holding parts of herself back. Jake, meanwhile, is protective to the point of being overbearing, which gives the romance its rough edge all the way through.

It stays volatile.

Across Take a Breath, Take it Deep, and Take the Gun, the central relationship keeps getting tested from different angles. The first book leans hard into bottled-up attraction and immediate danger. The second deals with betrayal, fallout, and the return of a threat from Ana's past. The third pushes forward after a major revelation, with Ana and Jake still trying to hold on while outside forces keep coming for them. So although the trilogy is one continuing romance, it also reads like a string of escalating crises.

If you like romantic suspense where the love story is never allowed to settle, this is the shape of the series. Expect obsession, protective instincts, messy family loyalties, and a heroine who keeps having to decide whether safety and love are even the same thing. The books are dramatic, emotional, and unapologetically intense. They are not cozy mysteries in romance clothing. They are darker, louder, and much more interested in what happens when two people want each other at exactly the wrong time.