Sadly, this was the first Did Not Finish book for me for 2018. I wanted to like it because the idea behind it was interesting and the plot sounded great, but when I found myself actively avoiding my Kindle so that I didn't have to keep reading, I gave up. It's also the first ever assigned book club book I didn't finish which is a huge disappointment to me.
The first strike was Annie being an unnecessarily violent DEA agent - she should have been fired for being repeatedly abusive, not reassigned. Even if we pretend that her propensity to violence isn't totally beyond the pale, knowing her violent history with perps and the way that she kept asserting herself into Cade's issues with students, one would think that she'd be semi-useful in an actual situation that would call for self-defense, but no. She's totally useless. Annie was constantly being thrown aside so the "hero" could deal with major attacks alone, leaving her like a to stupid to live footnote while big bad Cade slayed dragons (or not, I don't know know because I gave up when she went from being useless to too inept to find her car keys and actually help him). Also, she is this amazing sleuth who can just intuitively peg all of these other men in town as military/LEO but blindly thinks that big bad military man Cade is some schlub push-over who needs protecting from teenagers? It doesn't even make sense.
I could have soldiered on if Annie being a total tool was the only flaw, but the head-jumping in this book was the final strike. Most of the book was told in alternating POV (ie: a chapter in Annie's POV then a chapter in Cade's) which was great. But whenever Annie and Cade were in a chapter together any structure to the chapter devolved quickly. Are we in Annie's head? Yes, this chapter starts out in Annie's POV so we're totally in her head...except for when we're in Cade's for a paragraph because he has something he just HAS to think on page, but when he's done thinking his stellar thought, we'll go back to Annie's head. But wait. Cade has another thought we just have to hear so we're bouncing back to him without warning. UGH. I love alternating POV books, but only when it's denoted by a segment or chapter break - not when it's five different POV changes on one page. And how did Annie know Cade's dog's name when she didn't even know he had a dog? 20 seconds after finding out he existed, she was mentally calling him by his name. This is just my opinion, but that kind of writing smacks of laziness and bad editing.
Although this story had potential and the basic drug-ring plot line was very interesting, this book just wasn't my personal cup of tea.