BALL & CHAIN

TITLE: BALL & CHAIN

AUTHOR: ABIGAIL ROUX

Pages: 306

Date: 17/03/2014

Grade:  5+

Details: no. 8 Cut & Run

Own / Kindle

The blurb:

“Home from their unexpected deployment, the former members of Marine Force Recon team Sidewinder rejoin their loved ones and try to pick up the pieces of the lives they were forced to leave behind. Ty Grady comes home to Zane Garrett, only to find that everything around him has changed—even the men he went to war with. He barely has time to adjust before his brother, Deuce, asks Ty to be his best man. But that isn’t all Deuce asks Ty to do, and Ty must call for backup to deal with the business issues of Deuce’s future father-in-law.

Nick O’Flaherty and Kelly Abbott join Ty and Zane at the wedding on an island in Scotland, thinking they’re there to assuage Deuce’s paranoia. But when bodies start dropping and boats start sinking, the four men get more involved with the festivities than they’d ever planned to.

With the clock ticking and the killer just as stuck on the isolated island as they are, Ty and Zane must navigate a veritable minefield of family, friends, and foes to stop the whole island from being destroyed.”

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My thoughts:

The official release date for this book is today which makes me disinclined to talk about the story. It would be too easy to spoil the story for those who haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet and since I would never forgive a reviewer for doing that to me, I won’t take the risk of doing so now. I’ll limit myself to listing a few things I loved about this book and will hopefully manage to do so without revealing things that I shouldn’t. Of course, the only way to make sure you don’t encounter any spoilers is to do what I did, and stay away from reviews all together until you’ve read the book.

Let me start by saying that I loved this book. For me this book had everything I love about the ‘Cut & Run’ series. There was the mystery and all the high thrills action needed to solve it, not to mention some twists and turns that took my breath away. The fact that it was set in a Scottish mansion with secret passage-ways and located on a remote and private island only added to the sense of danger. I have always loved the interactions between the characters in these books and the addition of Kelly and Nick to Ty and Zane’s double act meant a lot more quick fire dialogue.

The start of the book had me reading with a huge grin on my face, a grin that was semi permanent and only interrupted by moments of laughter. In fact, the grin was stuck on my face for a long time. But on those occasions when the grin did fall of my face it was because there was real pain in the story.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I started this book. I was ready for residue of Ty and Zane’s last fight, especially since it was followed almost immediately by their separation. Conflict between Nick and Kelly wouldn’t have surprised me either since their intimate relationship was so very new and almost nipped in the bud by their separation. What I was completely unprepared for were the issues between Ty and Nick I was confronted with; deep seated issue without any easy answers. Reading about those was as painful as it was fascinating and kept me glued to the page.

I loved Ty’s struggles when he finds out about Nick and Kelly and his difficulty in determining what exactly is causing him to feel so off about it.

“Stop. The deal is I don’t freak out, and you don’t share sex stories.” – Ty to Kelly.

And I have to admit that I’m falling deeper in love with Kelly and Nick as I read more about them. Kelly’s support for Nick when he’s facing one of the toughest decisions he’ll ever have to make was beautiful.

““The decision you make, you make it for you. Not him.” Kelly whispered in his ear. “You make it for you. And I’ll be here.” – Kelly to Nick

But the Kelly’s words towards the end of this book took my breath away.

“What words do I use for this feeling if ‘I love you’ has already been used.”

Followed by:

““I love you, Nick,” Kelly whispered. “No matter what those words meant before, we know what they mean now. They’re ours now. Just ours.””

Well, those two quotes all but melted me.

Now that I’ve finished the book I should say that I wouldn’t have minded a bit more sexual action on these pages. It wasn’t something I was missing or actively waiting for while reading the book though. The story with all its twists and turns, action and clever dialogue had me in such a tight hold that I didn’t even realise how little sex there’d been until the story had ended.

It sort of breaks my heart that we appear to be nearing the end of Ty and Zane’s story. Of course there still is the ‘mole issue’ to resolve but, as things stand now, it looks like that might be the end of their adventures. Having said that, the ‘Sidewinder’ stories have only started and this book set us up for what promises to be one hell of a storyline in that series. And since Ty is very much a member of the Sidewinder team, the future might not be quite as bleak as I fear. One thing is sure though; no matter where Abigail Roux decides to take her characters next, I will be following them closely, making very sure not to miss a single word in the process.