Unstuck Pages

Wolf Rebel by Paige Tyler

Posted on 16th September 201912th September 2019 by Dísir

Wolf Rebel by Paige Tyler
Series: SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team #10
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on 26th November 2019
Pages: 320
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

She let him get away

SWAT werewolf Rachel Bennett is hounded by nightmares after a vicious attack left her with PTSD. Not knowing who or what she can trust anymore, she's relieved to be assigned to a high-profile protective detail. Diving into work might be the distraction she needs, until she notices the mysterious hunk who seems to follow her wherever she goes―and recognizes him.

Now he needs her help...

After he's badly injured, former Navy SEAL Knox Lawson seeks out Rachel when he realizes he's turning into a werewolf. He'd once been part of the group hunting her kind, but he knew he had to quit when he found Rachel in his crosshairs. Now he desperately needs her help.

Rachel isn't sure she trusts Knox, but having him around keeps the nightmares―and the monster creating them―away. Knox might not know much about being a werewolf, but there's no doubt he'll do everything in his power to win her trust and keep her safe.

With a rapidly growing menagerie of paranormal creatures injecting new life into the SWAT series, ‘Wolf Rebel’ is a fun and campy, enemies-to-lovers with a twist story as Paige Tyler ups the ante here with more than just repetitive storylines of werewolves obsessed with finding their mates. Whether Tyler has consciously done this deliberate kink in the growing narrative arc or not, it’s one I can definitely appreciate—it does keep things fresh if you’re concerned with the onset of reader-boredom that far down this series.

A malicious entity taking the form of an evil clown, a traumatised cop and an ex-SEAL turned ex-hunter turned werewolf (how’s karma for that?) find themselves tangled in a thriller-romantic suspense mix that thankfully doesn’t cut too deep in order to retain its entertainment value. Essentially, ‘Wolf Rebel’ took a direction that I wasn’t expecting but it was easy to hop on for the squinty-eyed ride as shapeshifters, vampires and other paranormal things came together with faint echoes of Stephen King’s IT tied to even fainter echoes of gothic (?) horror.

Rachel Bennett and Knox Lawson might seem an unlikely pair, but Tyler writes them in a way that does work with the multiple obstacles that they both face. Their getting together isn’t as drama-laden as I thought it would be; external circumstances bring them together so that means there isn’t overt conflict for the sake of deliberately tearing a couple apart before some third party intervenes to drive them back together.

Suspension of disbelief is par for the course, but ‘Wolf Rebel’ seems to have regained that panache I thought the series started lacking in the middling few books, with a newly expanded arc that bodes pretty well for future books.

Fighting Absolution by Kate McCarthy

Posted on 12th September 2019 by Dísir

Fighting Absolution by Kate McCarthy
Published by Kate McCarthy on 10th September 2019
Pages: 404
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

"She's a combat medic.He's SAS, and her best friend.They weren't supposed to fall in love."

At fifteen, Jamie Murphy finds herself broken and alone, convinced she doesn't need anyone.

Until she does.

Bear is the boy behind the fence, the one who was there for her when no one else was.

Until he's not.

Left with nothing, Jamie joins the army hoping it will give her purpose. The last thing she expects is the best friend from her past to reappear in the dusty plains of a war-torn country. No longer the boy she once knew, Bear is now a man: big, bearded, and SAS—one of the army’s elite.

Soon Jamie finds herself not only fighting against her enemies, but her feelings for a man who left her once before. Can she risk losing him all over again?

‘Fighting Absolution’ is not quite a conventional romance, so that’s best to get that out of the way at the start. For those who are used to the establishing scene of the protagonists following a particular trope they are familiar with, this tosses all of it out of the window. Maybe I’m one of those, so inured to tropes and straight-up, direct coupledom despite the difficulty the protagonists face getting together. After all, it’s the classification of romance, isn’t it?

Kate McCarthy strays from this a fair bit and inadvertently, treads on several triggers or safety boundaries that some readers might have. Incidental friends to lovers? Second chances? Or second choices? It’s hard to sit down and categorise it, as mixed as I am even as I write this review.

In short, I was afraid that this would become a love triangle within a ‘growing-up’ type of story. In some ways, it is, and it isn’t, with some layers of complication (read: deception) between the protagonists. The romantic trajectory isn’t a straight one where both protagonists meet and then things are immediately set in stone from there onwards. It certainly follows Jamie Murphy’s journey more than a couple’s journey together for at least a third of the book, then takes a bit of a skewed turn when a third party so to speak, gets introduced.

Honestly, I’m sort of uncomfortable with the this particular skew, but these are my own expectations talking because of McCarthy messing with my own idea of ‘meant-to-be’ that I’m used to in romantic fiction. It’s not a bad read by any means, though there is the usual frustrating push-pull, some stubbornness and the lack of communication resulting in could-be-avoided-conflict as the narrative shifts from angsty to oddly light-hearted and back to angsty again.

‘Fighting Absolution’ is a longer read with New Adult inclinations, and told in the shadow of war, PTSD and difficult personal histories, has a plot that relies on losses and gains for its emotional momentum. I’m not entirely sure how many years slip by between the pages, but the passage of time and the slow burn give the HEA a bit more depth and credence. I liked parts of it, was uncomfortable with some of the others…and that is going to be my bottom-line. But it wasn’t hard to get caught up with the drama of it all, and for that alone, it was quite worth it.

Sin For You by Sherilee Gray

Posted on 8th September 20198th September 2019 by Dísir

Sin For You by Sherilee Gray
Series: Rocktown Ink #2
Published by Sherilee Gray on 5th September 2019
Pages: 189
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
three-half-stars

My best friend's sister is back in town, and while she’s here, she's under my protection. Quinn Parker had her heart broken, and I'll make sure no one hurts her again.

But when she starts looking around for a hot, no-strings distraction, I can’t stand back and do nothing. No one is touching this vibrant beauty...but me.

She’s the woman of my dreams, but Quinn wants a good time, not a long time. We play by her rules: no one finds out, no one gets hurt.

I have to keep it casual because an ex-con like me can't offer her forever…even if I want so much more.

Sherilee Gray tackles the brother’s best friend trope with a grand helping of angst in ‘Sin For You’ and it’s a steamy one that pulls you in from the start.

I definitely liked this one much better than the first in the series, even if I hadn’t been on board the whole time with the protagonists essentially, taking turns to be wishy-washy about coming up with reasons and/or excuses why they shouldn’t be with each other and why they have nothing but sex to give.

It’s a strange one I’ll admit; the angst and the monologues that both Bull and Quinn emit in stages can both tug at the heartstrings and annoy simultaneously. Gray writes well enough and eloquently enough to show the pain each character has gone through, but the manner in which they repeatedly switch roles in trying to justify their actions and beliefs (while assuming too much and hashing things out too little) did get grating after a while. And just as you think they’ve got it sorted, off they go again, on a tangent that could have been easily solved by a bit more talk and a little less internal self-agonising.

‘Sin For You’ is quite an emotional see-saw to say the least, and all the quirks that come along with it. Both Bull and Quinn are relatable (sort of) and Gray does tension and steam well enough that I can squirm with glee each time the both of them mess up the sheets. It’s not a bad read nonetheless, even with the hand-wringing, needless tears and the multiple turns the characters take on the merry-go-round.

Total Control by Laura Griffin

Posted on 4th September 2019 by Dísir

Total Control by Laura Griffin
Series: Alpha Crew, #4
Published by Gallery Books on 2nd September 2019
Pages: 183
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
two-half-stars

Navy SEAL Jake Heath has his eyes on Alexa Mays. The FBI Agent is whip smart and hot as hell, but she won’t give him the time of day. So, when she calls him out of blue, he thinks his luck has changed.

But instead of meeting up for a romantic dinner, Alexa needs Jake for a very different reason. Her counterterrorism team is hot on the heels of the extremist that Jake’s task force has been tracking for months, and now he’s on American soil. The only way she can take him down is with Jake’s help.

Alexa knows Jake is tough and relentless...and that the chemistry between them is electric. Although she’s risking her heart—and maybe even her career—by bringing him onto the mission, she doesn’t have another choice. Together, they’re an unstoppable and powerful team.

As the hours tick by and a lethal enemy gets closer to launching an unimaginable attack, Alexa and Jake need to fight fire with fire before the clock runs out. The only question is: will their own flames get in the way?

Laura Griffin’s ‘Alpha Ops’ series and I have been on rocky ground since day one; it is so startling dissimilar to the heart-pounding crime thrillers that she writes that these brief, novella-length works feel like they’ve been penned by someone else, both in style and in plot-execution. Yet I keep returning to them, hoping that each one would get better, even as ‘Total Control’ has left me on the fence.

Everything was cursory here: context and histories that were told rather than shown, explained away with a few lines rather than drawn out with chapters, and lacked the usual solid development that Griffin’s careful plotting in her full-length works contain. Her protagonists’ connection seemed forced especially when Alexa Mays only decided to give Jake Heath the time of day after 6 months of radio silence because she needed something from him.

In fact, it was harder to like Alexa at all, when Griffin seemed to have set her up as callous and manipulative from the beginning, which made Jake’s willingness (by blowing off his family for her) to ingratiate himself into her good books even more inexplicable. I think, above all, there were scenes that lacked the ‘softer’ emotional bits—or rather, vulnerability—that would, ironically, given an action-packed story more edge and more impact. That it went from zero to a hundred towards the last quarter—a bit of a feat considering this topped out at a rushed 120-ish pages on my reader—was something that came unexpectedly, though not in an unwelcome fashion, until it tapered off to a rather abrupt conclusion that felt like a HFN.

I’m not ashamed to say that I liked the past 20 or so pages the best, which nonetheless, still wasn’t quite enough to erase the lacklustre first half. I only wished ‘Total Control’ was a full-length (and more balanced) book and had it been, it would have been phenomenal.

Broken Knight by L.J. Shen

Posted on 27th August 201925th August 2019 by Dísir

Broken Knight by L.J. Shen
Series: All Saints High, #2
Published by L.J. Shen on 17th August 2019
Pages: 205
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
two-stars

Not all love stories are written the same way. Ours had torn chapters, missing paragraphs, and a bittersweet ending.

Luna Rexroth is everyone’s favorite wallflower.

Sweet. Caring. Charitable. Quiet. Fake.

Underneath the meek, tomboy exterior everyone loves (yet pities) is a girl who knows exactly what, and who, she wants—namely, the boy from the treehouse who taught her how to curse in sign language. Who taught her how to laugh. To live. To love.

Knight Cole is everyone’s favorite football hero.

Gorgeous. Athletic. Rugged. Popular. Liar.

This daredevil hell-raiser could knock you up with his gaze alone, but he only has eyes for the girl across the street: Luna.

But Luna is not who she used to be. She doesn’t need his protection anymore.

When life throws a curveball at All Saints’ golden boy, he’s forced to realize not all knights are heroes.

Sometimes, the greatest love stories flourish in tragedy.

I’m relatively new to L.J. Shen but yes, I do know what I’m getting into…mostly.

I like the complexities that Shen explores when it comes to the dynamics between screwed-up youths and young adults—it all veers towards the dangerous and the complicated but also sometimes involves the absurdities of the merry-go-round of relationships simply because people *can’t* seem to do simple. That they’d rather pine and do the ‘do-we-or-do-we-not’ dance are not just characteristics that are seen more in New Adult stories (admittedly, some adult characters do the same) but that Shen takes it to the maximum in ‘Broken Knight’.

Luna/Knight exemplify this particular dynamic in a dance that’s both angsty and sometimes, wholly unnecessary, before they finally, finally untangle the threads that keep them bound no matter what. Watching them wait for each other, wanting each other at the wrong time, then the vicious tit-for-tat game they play is undoubtedly quite the excruciating bit to take in, but Shen surprises me at every turn with her words, with her analogies, and her unexpected perceptions on love and relationships, albeit through secondary characters.

Abandonment issues take the forefront here. In fact, it feels like the primary issue that supposedly makes everyone act up and it’s as though the sins of the fathers bleed down into the next generation. That the previous generation, as twisted as they were, would raise wholesome families by extension, will seem like a joke at times.

Throw in the typical vices that lean towards the darker side of N/A plots and you’ll get drugs, promiscuous behaviour and a whole ton of doing things because characters can and will and want to hurt other people—with sullen teenagers continually acting like children while pretending to be adults and creating a storm of angst because they can’t see past their hormones. This much, I can believe, perhaps and if this is what Shen intends, then perhaps the book is a success.

I’ve not read Shen’s earlier works, but ‘Broken Knight’ will probably screw around with some people’s heads as well, particularly if you look at an iron-clad HEAs as a natural part of romantic fiction. It’s not a book that’s easy to like—I’m not sure I can say I do, honestly, since it’s Shen’s use of words that kept me going—but it’s certainly one that you can get through with the feeling like you’re watching a train-wreck happening again and again.

Fallen by Rebecca Zanetti

Posted on 25th August 2019 by Dísir

Fallen by Rebecca Zanetti
Series: Deep Ops, #2
Published by Zebra on 24th September 2019
Pages: 368
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
three-stars

Too quiet.
A talented hacker who got caught, Brigid Banaghan is now forced to work with a secret Deep Ops unit. But she won't reveal any more to these renegade Feds than she has to. Especially not to Raider Tanaka, her control freak of a bodyguard and handler. It's enough that his body is tensed for action and his heated gaze is always on her . . .

Too sharp.
Raider knows there's more to his new assignment than he's been told. Why send a deadly agent of his experience to guard a computer genius—even a gorgeous, unpredictable, undisciplined one? But when Brigid's estranged father is named in an investigation into Boston's organized crime, Raider's mind switches onto high alert, just like his senses . . .

Too close.
To clear her father's name, Brigid needs Raider's help. The Unit's idea that she bring a strait-laced Fed in as her "fiancé" won't fly, though—not unless Raider can release his inner bad boy and become the rebel Brigid can't resist . . .

‘Fallen’ is Rebecca Zanetti’s second instalment of her ‘Deep Ops’ series and one that, if you’ve not read the first book, could be difficult to wade into from the beginning as you struggle to make sense of events, characters and context. But it isn’t an impossible task to figure out that this ragtag team of covert government agents operating off the fly, will do off-the-record missions barely held together by duct tape despite the individual competencies and shady backgrounds of its agents.

I know that Raider Tanaka’s story has been long-awaited, and I was hoping ‘Fallen’ would do justice to it with a pairing of handler and former ex-con. But there’s pretence on several levels as Brigid and Raider go undercover, but perhaps the strongest betrayal is yet to come as Brigid keeps her own secrets from him. That all seems to be suddenly forgiven when things come to a climactic finish however, does feel like a cop-out without Brigid paying her dues, so to speak.

Zanetti’s writing style, in itself, is sometimes, hard to pin down and this had me stumbling particularly in the middle. There are driving, satisfying moments where you could literally see the jigsaw puzzles sliding seamlessly into place, just as there are moments of high-riding tension, only to be broken by odd pockets of humour that surface within the storytelling—unwarranted, unexpected but sometimes enough to jerk you into a bark of laughter—with characters who have at least a quirk or 2 that become their calling card. And that, never fails to leave me either breathless, or scratching my head in bewilderment at the absurdity of the very different aspects of storytelling that Zanetti seems to incorporate in all her works. Suspension of disbelief aside, there were scenes (particularly the ones with anthropomorphism) that were probably meant to be funny but had me painfully grimacing instead.

‘Fallen’ is a not bad read, though not a fantastic one. There are hints of future pairings (though it seems the rest of the books are a long time in coming) and I wish it’d left more of an impression nonetheless, given how much I was looking forward to Raider’s story and how much I like Zanetti’s storylines.

Between Me & You by Kimberly Kincaid

Posted on 20th August 201920th August 2019 by Dísir

Between Me & You by Kimberly Kincaid
Series: Remington Medical #3
Published by Kimberly Kincaid Romance on 13th August 2019
Pages: 280
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

He hates the corporate world. She's all business. Now they have to work together on the one job that could make or break them both...

Connor became a flight medic for one reason, and one reason only. To help people.If he can keep his head down and his past in the past while he's at it? Even better.

Until Harlow appears to upend his world with an offer he can't refuse.

She's calculating. Composed. Scalpel-sharp.

And she'll stop at nothing to make her father's business successful.
Even if that means teaming up with Connor to turn around a failing clinic.

He shouldn't like her.

He definitely shouldn't want her.
But the more they work together the less he's able to resist.

But Connor's secrets run deep. Will Harlow's ambition ruin him, or will she be his salvation?

Where writing is concerned, Kimberly Kincaid barely puts a foot wrong. Admittedly, there are some plots and characters that are obviously more palatable than others but a confident, driving style is what Kincaid has in spades. That alone, has so much going for it: it moves the plot along swiftly and keeps you peeled to every twist and turn…thanks to the beauty of words.

I do like Kincaid’s Remington Medical series thus far (minus the second book, which felt like an aberration to me) and ‘Between Me & You’ is like a fantastic fix for dreary afternoons with a pairing that is solid, well-matched and built on mutual respect and teamwork.

Harlow Davenport and Connor Bradshaw clash at first but both are strong characters in their own right and alphas in their own fields: their friction is believable, their tussle realistic. It’s isn’t quite an enemies-to-lovers kind of romance and neither is it a rivalry, but their ways of looking at life and business differ especially when Connor and Harlow are tasked as co-directors of a clinic that has been racking up a debt that goes straight into the stratosphere.

In short, I think Kincaid does brilliantly in pulling together the heart of medicine and the business side of it. Situated at opposing ends of this spectrum, I liked Harlow’s and Connor’s compromises and the general maturity they show that finally had them meeting in the middle. Much of their romance is built on conflict management, though the climax is one that is a tad predictable as is their subsequent (and somewhat quick) resolution at the end.

More than Connor/Harlow’s chemistry or admiration for each other however, Kincaid’s emphasis on respect and trust, the bonds of friendship and what families should mean shines through here and for that alone, ‘Between Me & You’ is a worth-it read.