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On His Watch (Katie Ruggle)

On His Watch (Search and Rescue) - Katie Ruggle
On His Watch is a prequel novella to Ruggle's "Search and Rescue" series, whose first full-length novel will be released in Spring 2016.

For the most part, I thought it gave a good glimpse about what the series about Field County Rescue Dive Team would be like. Honestly, I have never read stories about SAR diver before -- I get a number of firefighters or detectives but never divers -- and this novella offered a nice change. It even had a heart-pumping scene of our hero, Derek, rescued a kid who fell through the ice into the cold water. It was quite intense! Not only that, this novella also had missing children and a mountain lion!! So on the action front, Ruggle did pretty well.

However, I wasn't really sure about the romance... Derek and Artemis used to be a couple, until four years ago when Derek broke up with Artemis and then Artemis married another guy. The thing is, I felt that so many things happened off page, and it was pretty shoved down due to the length (this is a novella after all) and the attempt to find the missing children. I understand that the novella wants to introduce readers to the various characters, but most of the times I got this feeling that I 'missed' the process of building up the camaraderie or relationship. These characters knew each other, and then referring to things that I didn't really know. You know what I mean?

For example, when the girls were missing, and then Derek asked Artemis, "Steve’s girls are missing?” ... I thought, "Wait, who's Steve??" Or when one of the firemen said that his Chief would come later and help the search team because there was "Another arson" ... and my mind went directly, "What? Which arson? What was going on? There was arson happening?!?"

It was like that you know ... even the cause of Derek and Artemis' break-up didn't mention until later on in by way of conversation, and I was a bit struggling to get the reference of them knowing one another before.

Still, it did give me curiosity to know more about these people. So I will stick around to check out the full length novel next year...

PS: I checked Amazon; it seems that this book is free.



The ARC is provided by the publisher via Netgalley for an exchange of fair and honest review. No high rating is required for any ARC received.