Avenged

It’s been a little while since I have spent time with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team Boys, but it was like coming home when I read Avenged by Kaylea Cross this past week. I was reunited with Schroeder, Cruz, Vance, Tuck, DeLuca and the rest of the gang. I was introduced to a very strong heroine, Taya. Of course the heroines have to be strong and tough to put up with the likes of the HRT boys.

Avenged threw me for a loop. Cross writes a great story that isn’t just repeated book after book in the HRT series. Each character has their own issues to deal with on the team and while finding their true love. In this story, I expected certain things that didn’t happen and other things happened I didn’t expect. Kinda vague, huh? Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but just know that even on book 5, I am still loving the twists and turns and original stories Cross is coming up with.

Nathan (or any of his nicknames “Doc”, “Dr. Feelgood”, Nate, Schroeder), is a very conflicted guy on a downward spiral into a dark abyss. His teammates are starting to notice. His job is at risk. He has to pull his life together and learn how to heal from his past. Enter Taya. She is a kickass heroine even if she doesn’t feel like it. She and Nathan met in a horrible situation when he was a PJ in the Air Force and he rescued her from a terrorist after nine months of being held hostage. One difference between how they handled that situation is that she sought help, healed and moved on from the terrible experience.

When the two of them are together they are so much better than when they are alone. They bring out the best in each other. There is so much respect and trust for one another. It poured out of them. I loved watching the chemistry between them and the love grow even stronger. Cross wrote Nate and Taya’s love story so well. It truly fit their personalities and the story quite well. Avenged is quite a page turner and was difficult to put down.

If you are looking for a fast paced romantic suspense with powerful emotion that will have you clinging to the book (or your ereader) wondering what will happened next, give Avenged a try. While it is fun to read the series in order, they can be read as stand alones as each plot is unique to the book.

Interesting plots, well-developed characters, realistic action…

Coffee ROILED in the stomach, not rolled.

Careful not to interchange nominative and objective pronouns (I, me…) and terms lying/laying.

Tags: FBI, Tortured Hero, Heroine: 34, Hero: 28, Older heroine younger hero

Holy crap! Not that I thought this series was coasting along or anything, but AVENGED took the series to a whole other level.

Taya (34) and Nathan (28) had a history that changed them in so many ways. Nathan hadn’t dealt with the loss of his friend during the rescue mission to get Taya. Classic survivor’s guilt. A slew of willing women had become his drug of choice for dealing with his demons. As the newest member of the HRT team, the team had become his family. He couldn’t stand the thought of going to them for help, of them seeing him close to spiraling the drain or for them to think they couldn’t trust him to watch their six. But he wasn’t in complete denial; he’d known for a while that he wanted to be a better man and was working on it. Of the two, Nathan was more of a mess than Taya, but I never saw him as less of a man. And it was a nice to see a heroine be the rock for a change.

Taya was an amazing heroine. The things she’d suffered during her time in captivity, the duplicity of the government and the stunning truth of her marriage to a terrorist would have wrecked anyone. But she was a fighter. Even though her humanitarian efforts and the upcoming trial to put the mastermind behind her captivity behind bars painted a large bullseye on her back, she forged on, determined to do the right thing and seek justice.

The blossoming romance felt sweet, filled with warmth and understanding. I loved Taya’s honesty about her feelings for Nathan; she gave him space but tried not to let him retreat into himself. If anyone could empathize with him, it was her. I also loved that Nathan was very aware that he could never treat her like the other women, and he never entertained the thought of trying to f_ck her out of his system (because so many heroes have that thought). That wasn’t who he was. Their connection grew slowly and steadily, and their friendship and past experiences made a good foundation. Considering how emotional these two were, the sex scenes were likewise emotional as well as hot. Beautiful, actually.

The suspense was mostly a cat and mouse game with terrorists trying to hunt her down and kill her before her court appearance. But the true excitement happened towards the end with a showdown of epic proportions. And I do mean epic! The scenes were horrifying in their scope and brutality that I had chills through the whole ordeal. Once again, Taya got to show that spine of steel and courage that shouldn’t have been possible. This had everything I could have asked for in a romantic suspense.