2.5 Stars
Another "new to me" author. I am always excited when I find a new author in this K9 genre-hoping that this will be a new series to love. I'm honestly floored at how hard it is to find books that actually involve true K9 plotlines with the K9 actually becoming a true character. The ones who get it right do it beautifully. As I said, it IS difficult to find.
First of all, I need to mention that this was the 6th book in the series and I had not read any of the previous books. I really don't think that it was a problem, and I didn't feel like I was lost at any time, but there were a few mentions of "past" occurrences.
Without going into in depth spoilers, here are a couple of issues I had with this book. First, it felt like the author had little to no actual experience with law enforcement and how things actually work. In this day and age with the resources available, that was surprising.
For example, the number of events that occur with the FMC in this story - Officer Jenna Morrow - it was just unrealistic. In the span of a couple of days, there is a bomb that blows up her car, a poisonous snake thrown at her, several attempts on her life that involve MULTIPLE gun shots - in very public places, dozens of spiders hidden in her bed, and that is not even the totality of everything. In several of these events, the police weren't even called. In most of the cases, after a gunfight, there was NO crime scene investigation. The MC's just ran off to somewhere else where they were shot at again.
Secondly, the whole task force situation didn't make any sense. Each member had K9's but their responsibilities didn't make sense. Add to that, they all stayed at the house of a brand new civilian that the FMC had just met a couple of days ago and discussed a huge sting operation in full detail. This just wasn't like anything I've read before. The addition of the K9's felt like after thoughts and the way they were utilized made my blood boil. The bad guy is shooting at our MC's and Officer Morrow actually sends her K9 directly into the path of the gunman? Then, the dog gets shot with a heavy duty tranquilizer gun (bad enough to be hospitalized for a couple of days) and they pick him up from the vet and he is immediately sent running after a bad guy, who is....you guessed it...shooting at them again. This is within hours of him being released from the vet.
Anyway, there was a lot more but now I'm just being picky and that is never productive. I did enjoy the Christian inclusion in the story. The relationship between the FMC and MMC seemed to slowly develop organically - even though they were thrown together in the beginning in a manner that again felt extremely forced.
I do not think I will be reading anything else by this author.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Audio for the opportunity to listen to and review this Audio ARC. This book will be out for publication on August 26, 2025.