Series: Dream Team, #4
Traits & Tropes: single mom; former soldier hero; alpha hero; heroine with trust issues; hero who's never really been loved
Publication Date: 11.30.21
Genre/Setting: Contemporary; Denver, Colorado, USA
Heat Level: 2.5
Rating: 4/5
Narration Rating: 4.5/5
Pepper Hannigan has her young daughter to consider and that means romance is off limits until she’s older and can emotionally handle it. That doesn’t change her attraction to undeniably charming and kind commando, Auggie, but Pepper’s had enough heartbreak and she’s determined to protect herself and her daughter.
Augustus Hero wants nothing more than to create a proper home with Pepper and her daughter, Juno, but with the mixed signals she’s giving him he has no idea how to proceed. When Juno jumps in to play matchmaker on her own, Pepper and Auggie are finally brought together but this also puts Pepper in danger. Auggie will have to step in and protect his girls from this new threat if he wants to finally have his own happy ending.
I’ll admit, I was a little intimidated when I saw how thick this book was because I wasn’t sure it would hold my attention for so long. Fortunately, the with audiobook version this became a nonissue as Susannah Jones’ narration drew me into the story. She did a great job of really imbuing the dialogues with the emotions of the characters in any given moment. This combined with the suspenseful, multilayered aspects of the story kept me wanting to know more, though I think I would’ve benefited from reading more of the previous books in the series (I’ve only read one) to fully appreciate the overarching plotlines. As with that one previous book I read, I found myself a bit thrown with some of the weird slang/abbreviations used in this story, but I found I mostly was able to ignore it after the first few. I’m usually not big on single parent/main characters with kids tropes but it worked here for me I think because Juno feels like a fully fleshed out character as well and she’s instrumental in bringing Auggie and Pepper together. I was definitely not a big fan of Pepper at first given how blind she was to how she was hurting Auggie; even if her reasoning was not wanting to do anything that would harm Juno, that just felt like an excuse. Fortunately, she recognized that she was making excuses and set about making things right. Auggie was basically my definition of the perfect hero, protective and tough, yet also gentle and sensitive and slightly damaged and I loved that with Pepper and Juno he finally found the unconditional love he’d been missing for basically his entire life. His backstory to me was even sadder than Pepper’s and I found it very satisfying to see them create their own version of family for themselves and take care of each other.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book and its audiobook. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4351575206
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1830199264
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