Finished
Advance to Contact by CJ Carella, Warp Marines Book 3
Third Volume of the Warp Marines, where United Stars of America is under siege from multiple hostile alien species and Day of Infamy (in Book 1) had seen hundreds of outposts and such attacked. In Book 2, a counter offensive destroyed one of humanity's enemies, but that's a minor league player, mainly due to deployment of new warp fighters. In Book 3, the warp marines are going to meet yet another test... The Tai-Linn, one of the oldest species in the galaxy, has requested the presence of the humans, possibly to negotiate transit rights (right now, they are prohibiting any hostiles through, and their world is a transit nexus) and the United Stars decided to send Secretary of State plus the veteran company of Warp Marines as escort. Once they got there, nothing is as it seems. They were held hostage on the station, along with their worst enemies, the "Lampreys", and the Tai-Linns are keeping them only for entertainment, to staged "Arena" combats where the two companies are to fight each other... and whatever nasty creatures the Tai-Linn think of, while two factions within the Tai-Linn enlist two humans to destroy the other faction... Then humans discover the secrets the Tai-Linn were REALLY hiding...
Warp Marines so far have turned out to be a better military sci-fi series that managed to be fresh without overly rehashing things unlike the other series I've read previously, mainly by changing the environment and the enemies around. 7 out of 8 if you like the genre.
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Finished
Dangerous Attraction by Sidney Bristol FREE on Amazon
Ex-SEAL Travis made one mistake... trusting a guy too much, and he got a felony conviction out of it. Only Aegis Group took him in as security consultant, and they are helping FBI to find a serial killer operating around Las Vegas for over a decade... and ran into Bliss Giles, who wanted to report her sister missing but LVPD wasn't very sympathetic. Travis realized Bliss' sister Wendy is the last victim of this serial killer, as Wendy fit the profile perfectly. Travis needed Bliss' help in retracing Wendy's footsteps, and Bliss wanted Travis. But the psychopath has a plan for Wendy, and it does not include meddlesome EX-SEAL and pesky sister...
Enough too-stupid-to-live moments to cringe. Travis tells Bliss "I'm going to check the place out. It will take a while. STAY IN THE CAR." And guess what she does? She drives up to the house when her panic takes over and she goes into the house, alone. In another one, Wendy was told NEVER GO OUTSIDE. But when her housekeeper arrived, she goes outside to help with groceries, only to find the bad guy holding a knife to her housekeeper's throat, i.e. "get in the trunk or I kill her". In another case, Bliss revealed that her sister was wearing a tracking device because she believed she can kill Daniel alone and she doesn't want cops there to mess everything up. (!)
3/8 even though the rest of the book and the plotting actually ain't that bad.
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Finished
The Hunter Bride by Cynthia Woolf FREE on Amazon
Josephine "Jo" Shafter's life as bounty hunter was done when she put her father and her brother's killer behind bars, and now her life is without purpose. Nobody in the East will marry a gun-toting foul-mouthed tough woman... So... she married herself all the way out to Montana, to a little town of Hope's Crossing, to the local sheriff Sam Longworth, and hope she can be as womanly as her mother had taught her so long ago.
Sam Longworth has his own problems. He was a bounty hunter until his wife asked him to settle down, so he did and became a pretty miserable sheriff, until his wife decided it's not enough, left on a stage coach... except she never made it. And he blamed himself. So he just needs a wife, a cook, a cleaner, a partner, but not a lover.
Until Jo's nemesis, the person she put behind bars, escaped, and is looking for her... Can both husband and wife, keeping secrets from each other, show some trust before either of them got killed?
Well, that's decided a more interesting take on the typical mail order bride trope of "weak and meek woman". But the occasional tease about the bad guy around town was not balanced well with all the scenes of domestic bliss, i.e. sexy times, cooking a meal, and so on. The chemistry between the two was somewhat lacking. Still, like the idea. 4/8