Ami's Hoard

3.5 stars

This novella comes with important message. I found this article on USA Today by Laura Kaye that talks about suicide among veterans, especially US Army. I found the statistic to be staggering -- that as of November 2013, 22 veterans committed suicide every day. Yep. Every. Day. That is just beyond me and my heart just breaks for them. Especially because 30% of the veterans say that they've considered suicide.

So you can say that I read this particular novella with that information in my head -- which resulted in a more intense situation in my way of understanding Easy. Easy suffers from PTSD and he has been developing suicidal thoughts. He feels like he has lost his way, especially the feeling to be needed, to have purpose in life. Until Nick Rixey's phone call asked him to help about a week ago, in which resulted in him participating in two rescue attempts, in addition finding out what actually happened that lead to their discharge from Afghanistan.

This novella starts exactly after Hard As You Can ended. Returning to Hard Ink Tattoo after rescuing Jenna Dean, the team decided to lay low for few days. Thus, the story in this novella is more quiet, more relaxed. However, we also have some intimate moments as Easy find himself connecting with Jenna, who suffers from trauma herself after being captured, beaten, and drugged -- as well as the quiet man dealing with his suicidal thoughts. I admit that I got all teary eyed when Easy finally opened up to his brothers-in-arms about what have happened to him for the past year.

I thought the difficult subject matter worked nicely with the romance building. At least in this novella, there is no 'I love you' or 'promises on forever after' being exchanged by Easy and Jenna. There was one 'deflowering' scene though, which really didn't move me what-so-ever. To be honest, I'm really starting to HATE the short time span in this story because everything in the romance department happens so very fast.

While developing some attachments or intimacy after tragic/extreme situation can work in romantic suspense, that somehow it diminishes the instant-love tone, but when you're reading it back-to-back like I do, it is getting frustratingly annoying. Similar to book #1 the rating is for the character (Easy) and the team, and most especially Jeremy and Marz. But the romance, once again, just so-so for me.

After this one, I need to take a break before starting book #3. The constant instant-love situation is driving me batty. But I still want to read Beckett's story before I move on with Jeremy/Charlie (who will have their story on April 14th).