This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I thought that this was good. Years ago I read a ton of Linda Howard but I stopped picking up her books for one reason or another. I decided to give this one a try and I found that I do still enjoy her writing. I found this to be a really enjoyable listen.

I really only have one main complaint with this book. I can't believe that I am going to say this but too much of this book was about the dog. I love dogs. My world revolves around my three dogs and I have to admit that they are incredibly spoiled. I love it when dogs are a part of the story. This book took things a bit far even for me. I felt like I had spent hours listening to how Tricks liked to play catch, how smart she was, how she liked to be fed, where she thought she needed to sit in the car, and the list goes on. Do you see that cover? It should have had the dog in the foreground with the humans in the background because that would have been more accurate.

Now, on to the humans. Morgan works for an elite unit and is enjoying some time off at the start of the story. He is attacked near his own home comes close to losing his life. Once he has recovered enough to leave constant medical care, his supervisor arranges for him to go to the home of his step-sister, Bo, who lives in a small remote town. Bo is the part-time police chief of a small town. It's is an administrative position and she fills in the rest of her time with computer work out of her home. She does not expect to find an incredibly sick man on her doorstep but he is in such bad shape she can't bring herself to send him away.

There is a lot going on in this book. Not only do they need to figure out who is responsible for the attack on Morgan at the start of the book, but Bo also has some issues in town that prove to be more dangerous than she counted on. It did feel like nothing happened with the mystery of who was responsible for trying to kill Morgan for the majority of the book and then everything came together really quickly at the end of the story. Bo's situation in town filled in the main part of the book nicely.

I thought that Morgan and Bo worked well together. Morgan was pretty open and shared as much with Bo as he could. Morgan was in pretty rough shape for a long time in this story but when he started to recover he seemed to do so very quickly and that is when things started to heat up between the pair. I thought that they had good chemistry with each other and I liked them as a couple.

I thought that Tanya Eby did a good job with the narration. It did take me just a bit to get used to her voice but once I did, I had no complaints. She handled all of the character voices very well and was able to add a lot of emotion to the story. I had no problem listening to her voice for hours at a time.

I think that readers who enjoy romantic suspense and love dogs will enjoy this one. I didn't think that this was Linda Howard's best work but it was an enjoyable story. I wouldn't hesitate to read more of her work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from William Morrow via Edelweiss and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library.

Initial Thoughts
This was probably closer to 3.5 stars but I am going with 3 for now. I love dogs. I have 3 dogs that mean the world to me and I do adjust my life quite often to meet their needs. I love dogs in books so it pains me to say that there was just too much of the dog in this book. If I talked about my 3 dogs as much as this book talked about, Tricks, nobody would want to be around me. I feel like the book was 50% about the dog with the rest of the story taking a back seat.

I liked Bo and Morgan well enough. It seemed like the book kind of forgot that Morgan was in danger for the bulk of the story until it came back into focus at the very end. Morgan went from being quite frail to almost superhero status in a blink of an eye which seemed odd to me. I thought that the story was interesting enough to keep me going. I listened to this story and thought that Tanya Eby did an acceptable job with the narration.

Ice

by Linda Howard

Ice was pretty much like an exciting action/thriller and romance movie.  While the beginning of the book was kind of slow to start up, once our couple gets trapped in the ice storm on the mountain, the action just kept moving forward.  This isn't a mystery or anything, really just a suspense and thriller that takes place throughout the night in an ice storm, with danger lurking everywhere in the form of mother nature as well as human.

Character development was sorely lacking, but I still found that I liked the main hero and heroine enough.  I wish we could have delved more into the relationship between Lolly and Gabe, because the ending of the book seems rather abrupt.

Nonetheless, this was a rather exciting and entertaining read, even if not my favorite of Linda Howard's work.

Halloween Bingo 2019

The blurb made it seem that she would spend a goodly chunk of the book getting herself back to the team or civilisation or whatever but actually it's only a few chapters in a story, though it is a pivotal point in the story for the heroines growth.

Levi Butcher leads a paramilitary unit of macho men and into this mix his boss puts a geek, and a female geek at that. She, Jina Modell, and the other geeks assigned to other teams, are unfit and would not be able to keep up with the team so they set about fixing that, trying to break her, but she refuses to break and becomes part of the team. After a few missions she ends up left behind and has to get to safety, ignoring pain and the fear of being trapped behind enemy lines.

It's interesting and the characters are well drawn, even if Levi Butcher comes across as being a bit of an ass sometimes while he tries to convince himself that the only feelings he has for Jina is that of a co-worker. I also had some issues with the resolution as it was a bit pat and easy. Still an interesting read with characters I was rooting for.