This is the 2nd book in the Elite Ops series.  This book can be read as a standalone novel.  For reader enjoyment & understanding of the series, I recommend reading in order.

Missy works with Conrad every day.  She realizes what a player he is, and decides she must change the course for her future.  When all goes boom, it is a good thing he is on her side.

Conrad has been in love with Missy and doing whatever he has to for her not to find out.  It could kill both of their careers if their superiors knew.  When the worst happens - they are going to put their feelings to the test.

This was a very sweet and sexy book.  Yet, it has a very compelling mystery weaved throughout.  I especially love that the story is ongoing.  I really do love series books.  This book is great and gets a 4/5 Kitty's Paws UP!

***This early copy was given in exchange for an honest review by Netgalley and its publishers.

Yet another disappointment in this series that hasn't had a "hit" since the first novella.

Bland characters thinking with their reproductive organs instead of using their brains, a very flimsy excuse for a romance, mediocre suspense...The whole "story" was just one long sex scene (with changing setting) with a few action scenes and a little (bland) mystery thrown in.

Hole-y plot, slow pacing, uninteresting characters...A poor excuse of a story.

Henrietta “Harry” Markowitz lost her husband seven years ago, and although not emotionally, she’s moved on in every other way. Danny was the love of her life, she knows she’ll never love again, but that doesn’t make her dead or incapable of feeling sexual attraction. And on her friend’s wedding, she’s found the perfect candidate for scratching the itch.

Senior Master Sergeant Matt Stanning has left his former occupation of finding and getting rid of explosive devices behind after losing his best friend to one of them in the Iraqi desert. Now he’s tasked with retrieving fellow soldiers that were taken prisoner or killed in action and reuniting them with their families. But the death of his best friend still haunts him, and the only way to forget is in the arms of a willing female or with a bottle of JD (or maybe both).
But there is one woman who’s remained in his memory for the past three months. Henrietta who let him touch her and touched him in return only to disappear from his life.

Now she’s back, or he’s back in her life, due to her archaeological discovery in the Iraqi desert, and neither Harry nor Matt find anything wrong with resuming their fling...Until Matt discovers Harry is his dead best friend’s wife. Which is quickly pushed to the side, since someone is determined to do whatever it takes to get their hands on whatever Harry found in the desert.



While Dangerous Territory was great, and Over the Line not so much, but it still had its moments, this third installment in this series lacked even those moments.

I disliked the merry widow heroine with her emotional cripple-ness and blindness to what was really going on in her head and in her heart. Not to mention her almost TSTL tendency of refusing to budge as the hero was trying to keep her safe from whatever was coming. I was rather ambivalent toward the hero, empathizing on one side, disliking him on the other. His issues could’ve been solved by talking to someone (as his friend did), and refusing to solve anything brought him to where he was, in love with his best friend’s wife, and guilty about it.
The romance was non-existent, where I’m concerned. I didn’t see or feel that they actually had any sort of romantic feelings for each other (due to their mutual issues about the dead guy), and although the sex scenes weren’t as prevalent as in the previous book they still sounded hollow, just the characters scratching their itches and going through the motions with no feelings behind their actions.

Speaking of action, it left me utterly cold and uninterested. It could be because of yet more fillers between the “meatier” scenes, or maybe I simply didn’t care what happened to or between the two leads, hence the mystery, suspense and action didn’t really touch any “nerves”.

Instead of a book or a story, this came across as merely words.

Eight months after saving her life in Afghanistan, and finally home himself, James Walker feels it's time he made his move on Beth Garcia, the woman he's been salivating over while they were deployed together. A rock-climbing weekend is pretty harmless as far as seduction goes, but he'll be killing two birds with one stone—make a pass (or more) on Beth and avoid his sister's wedding.

Then a call from his younger sister comes, and James knows it's all over. He'll have to go to the wedding, and brave his parents...But maybe, if Beth tags along, say, as his fiancée, she could keep the vultures at bay, and he could still make a pass (or more).



This story starts with the ambush in Dangerous Territory when Beth is injured and James saves her life. But there any similarities between the books end. While the aforementioned first book in this series had everything going on for it—tight plot, great writing, good pacing, great characters, danger, nail-biting action...this one didn't.

I loved the first and last few chapters, but it was everything in between that dropped the ball. From the voice, the drop in pacing, and even the narrative style in some scenes, it looked like this book was written by two different authors. The beginning and the end were well-structured, well-paced, the characters were likeable and adult-like, while in the middle it all came apart at the seams.

Beth, the strong, confident, self-assured Army Sergeant of a heroine, apparently shed all that with her uniform the minute she stepped foot in James' parent's house, and started acting like a teenager, hiding things, doubting things, not asking questions and not talking (which seems to be the crucial thing in this story) to the hero, who also suffered a slight character transplant in the middle of the story.
The second biggest problem was, as mentioned before, the feel the majority of the chapters were written by someone else. In Dangerous Territory Emmy Curtis excelled in making her characters shine both individually and as a "couple" while under a stressful situation. It was the same in the first chapter of this book (still set in Afghanistan), but as the stress of a danger zone wore off and then disappeared all together with the change of setting, the great writing blinked off. And only reappeared in the end (once again set in Afghanistan only not under a stressful situation), where the two leads once more became their "true" characters from the beginning of the story. I loved those two chapters set in Afghanistan (the last one being my favorite, because it was just so sweeeet). I wanted more of such well-written chapters, damn it!

And the third problem, also as mentioned before, was the pacing. Any slower and it would've been going backwards. The book was rife with fillers. Dialogue, inner musing and dialogues, scenes...The sex scenes were particularly filler-ish. I admit I liked Beth and James better when in the throes of their unresolved sexual tension, poised on the precipice only to be interrupted (or as James so eloquently put it "cockblocked by his own sister"). As soon as they made the plunge (literally), their "love" scene became formulaic without much feeling, just two characters going through the motions. And it got from bad to worse. Once the sex scenes become dull and boring, and you end up skimming the pages or skipping them altogether just to get things moving a little faster, you know you're in trouble.

This story would definitely have worked better as a novella, by keeping the beginning and end, trimming the unnecessary fillers, tightening the plot (the mystery sub-plot was so diluted by the mundane going on around it, I almost forgot there was a mystery) and keeping the "original" characters.
Its length was this story's killer.

Grace Grainger has spent the last four years of her life between the Four Seasons hotel in D.C. and Afghanistan. Now, on her fourth deployment as an embedded reporter with the American troops, she’s come to know danger up close as their convoy is attacked, she doesn’t make it to the rescue helicopter, and is suddenly huddled in a cave in the middle of nowhere with Air Force Master Sergeant Josh Travers...The man she spent the last three years thinking and dreaming about.


It’s always a good feeling when an impulse buy pays off. And this one payed off magnificently. Yes, it was short, but it packed quite a punch with wonderful, well-developed characters, a perfect-for-the-big-screen (or book, in this case) romance, just the right amount of drama, tension and danger, and some scorching hot sex (both in a cave and a hut in a remote Afghan village).

As said, both Grace and Josh were great characters, realistic, multi-dimensional, and very nicely layered, and their interactions together spanned the emotional spectrum from hot to cold, from happy to sad and everything in between, but with that unmistakable layer of bitter-sweet underneath it all. I wished for them to actually talk things through, her telling him the truth about her writing and true purpose for being in Afghanistan for him to finally get over his animosity toward her as a reporter, and I was disappointed it didn’t actually happened, and the author chose the “easier” fix of him reading one of her articles.
And I kept hoping for a HEA, and I must admit, although this is a romance novel, Ms Curtis had me doubting things for a moment toward the end...The end that could’ve been cheesy, but strangely wasn’t. It was a rather “easy” ending, but with such a feel-good vibe, it brought a smile to my face.

This story was just up my alley. Nicely structured, well-paced, with great characters, and a romance that truly shone through. Loved it.

"It is my duty as a pararescueman to save lives and to aid the injured. I will be prepared at all times to perform my assigned duties quickly and efficiently, placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, that others may live."