Brittney was truly amazing in how she wove this story together. The perfect amount of detail about even the minor characters in the book, you feel like you’re watching a movie! You can picture Ana and AJ swimming in that Alabama lake at sunset with fireflies and sticky ice cream. It’s easy to get wrapped up and feel like you’re Ana, getting swept off your feet by the Southern charm of AJ. His fierce loyalty and devotion from the moment they met is felt and then reaffirmed by his love for his family and friends from the start of this book. AJ is my new book boyfriend. I’ve been waiting for this book for quite a while and it did not disappoint. I couldn’t put it down and read it in about two days.
To give you a little more about AJ and this book (series):
Every unit in the military has several personality types in it which are present. You have the strong, silent type, the muscle, the brains, the bad boy, the defender, the daredevil, the natural-born leader, and then there's the goofball. Everyone tries to discredit the goofball, but they're just as important to the mission as any other person. We have a saying in the Army... work hard and play harder. Get the job done and then cherish the time you have with those you love. These are your goofballs. They know their priorities and know how important just one laugh is in stressful situations. When you live and work in a high optempo environment with a lot of stress, laughter gets you through it. That's our boy, AJ.
We first meet AJ in Finding Her Chance walking around in Star-Spangled boxers, a cowboy hat, and a pistol. That's it. The next time we see him is in Finding The Way Back chasing down an attempted assassin to a Presidential candidate. Ana and AJ first meet there in Charlotte, but working for opposing teams. She works for the FBI and he is a part of an elite, but covert, team of Navy SEAL operators. She's annoyed with some of his antics, often called by her separated husband as “a cold fish". She's rough around the edges, by the books, stubborn, and very straight forward. However, by the end AJ may have just gotten through the obsidian walls of Ana... making her even crack a smile at him. Timing is crap, though.
About nine months later our story begins. Ana and AJ still can't stop thinking about each other, even though they have yet to meet again, both trying to use every excuse in the book to not contact each other. One drunken call and 24 hours later, AJ is thrust back into Ana's life. AJ is at home in Alabama with family on the cusp of his little sister’s wedding to a man he doesn’t think is good enough for her when wheels go up and he’s headed off to DC on mission. They’re being tasked to find the leak in the FBI when sources go missing, particularly Russian sources key to bringing down the Volkovs, a ruthless Russian mob known for planting sleeper groups in the US during the end of the Cold War era. Ana’s unit is assigned to working with those sources, so when her picture shows up in the case file, AJ must find out if his heart belongs to a traitor. It doesn’t look good when Ana starts “running” after her boss goes missing, AJ right beside her to try and get to the bottom of just what’s going on, but he knows she’s holding back on something. With a little bit of Southern charm, the beauty of an Alabama skyline, and having no one else to trust Ana confides in AJ and his team to help save herself and the missing FBI sources.