September Readathon
2+
So this book is the third of many in an interconnected series, and while that doesn't always matter, it did hinder overall enjoyment of this one. Nothing I can help since this was one romance of many passed along to me in a huge pile--I'm not sure my friend who passed them along even has the others. But also not enough to make me skip reading it altogether. I don't feel the need to actively track down the others but I figure I'd nab any others if I ran into them.
The premise is novel and intriguing, and too much for one book. I might like the premise and the hub of characters and the potential therein most of all.
For being in command of an unfolding disaster the leads spend most of their page time navel gazing about their feelings for one another and delivering half-page explanations about those feelings. It got tedious.
The writing is some repetitious and florid. I don't mind some spelled out emotion or harder-hitting moments, but there was something too-too here. Also the head-hopping was quick and see-saw.
Lots of crammed in exposition, the characters thinking through "glad I know what this phrase/ piece of equipment/ regs means! because that way I know what it means!" stuff. This works as an occasional device but was relied on enough it became noticeable. It felt like we got more details about the tent the hero made sure the heroine got and everything he stocked the small fridge with and the layout of the nearby navy base than plot advancements.
I thought the injury to the heroine was a cheat. The book escaped having to resolve anything on the ground -- good to move the leads into a quiet space to get their HEA, but bad regarding every other aspect of the plot to that point. She could still be injured and their emotions thrown to the forefront and it used as a catalyst, but to end it with them 'out' of the survival zone (and brooding with guilt for being out) with brief updates from there isn't the absolute worst. And I do understand room was left for the next book to happen, bit to kick the heroine out so dramatically in what wasn't really the climax, just pretending to be, and then buttoning up with "well we're going back, but as a couple! let's save people and get bad guys" didn't do anything justice.
The epilogue really isn't one. Maybe it felt too short and considered too much of a set up for the next book to be a chapter.
With all these gripes it sounds like I outright disliked it but nah, it was fine. I do wonder why everyone involved insisted it remain a category however, and not given it room to be some version of a 'super' or longer romance. These are stories that needed more space to be told and they suffered for that.
Sidebar: every time they said or thought some iteration of "but this is what happens in a third world country! not AMERICA!" I couldn't stop my 'lol, please' lefty-brained thoughts from intruding on my reading. The hero from the hills of Kentucky who fought in Afghanistan was shocked at the conditions people were surviving in? The sheriff's deputy heroine who'd been on the force for a while couldn't believe it either? America is too land of the free and plentiful for folk to suffer in the aftermath of a state-ruining natural disaster? Hrumph.