One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Night Stalkers, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 416 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Sourcebooks Casablanca publisher Sourcebooks via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





After years of intense work and training, viciously struggling for every hard-earned inch of achievement, Sergeant Kee Smith has finally made it. Using everything from the grim lessons she learned as a kid on the streets to the impact her luscious warrior-woman body has on a man, she has clawed and wrestled and fought for every last bit of progress in her military career, all to get her to one place: SOAR.

The Army's Special Operations Aviation Regiment is the best of the best in the sky, and Kee is driven to not only be the second woman ever to make it into SOAR, but to excel in the deadliest piece of military hardware ever flown, a Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) Black Hawk helicopter.

She's finally made it. She's in SOAR and she's got her DAP Hawk. Okay, she's a little disappointed at the lack of excellence in her team. Sure, she respects team member Lieutenant Archibald Jeffery Stevenson III. Despite the pretentious name, he's a hell of an Army pilot. The fact that he's also a long drink of water who makes her hormones sit up and take notice ain't too shabby either.

The rest of them are just going to have to eat her dust as she shows them what a real female warrior can do in a helicopter.

Problem is, when you're on the front line in a hot zone, missions have a habit of not going according to plan. Kee is in a deadly position in a dangerous world, and simple survival is often dependent on your team. Kee needs to be more than just a hell of a gunner or the best woman in SOAR. She's going to need Archie...and a pretty big attitude adjustment...just to get out alive.


Two books into this series and I'm still surprised and impressed by Buchman's world of brave, loyal military heroes. I'm so glad I didn't let my prejudices about male romance authors and my ambivalence for military-themed romance hold me back from this series. I would have missed out on great characters and thrilling stories.

The beginning of this book worried me, though. I loathed Kee. Frankly, I would've been thrilled if Emily had parked a DAP Hawk on her head. She was an abrasive, obnoxious, ignorant, disrespectful bitch in need of a swift kick in the ass. Every time she referred to Emily as Major Hoity Toity, or dared to be dismissive of the elite force she was fighting beside, I wanted to drop her into a vat of boiling oil.

Of course, one of the reasons she offended me so much was because she mocked the heroes Buchman introduced in the first book, heroes I love as much as I loved their story. Seems to me, hating Kee for that is more a credit to the job Buchman did bringing those characters to life than a condemnation of Kee's character.

Well...okay, it can be both.

Kee is deeply wounded and insecure despite her achievements, and she wears Bitch like a flak jacket to hide those insecurities. She has some serious self respect issues and gets defensive with anyone who has had an easier life than she has - and in her mind, that's just about everyone. The chip on her shoulder is an RPG. On the flip side, she is also intensely honorable and a real straight shooter, even at her own expense. By the end, thankfully, and with a lot of help from Archie, I liked her.

Archie was not what I normally prefer for my romance heroes. Alpha male he definitely is not. Intelligent, awkward with women, polite and moneyed, he's more genteel gentleman than kick-ass warrior. A romantic suspense anomaly. While I can't say he hit the same Happy Reader buttons that Major Mark "Viper" Henderson did in the first book, I will say that I completely appreciated him as a change of pace in the genre, and liked him very much as a character.

I liked Kee and Archie as a couple very much, too.

The plot was lighter on suspense than the first book. That wasn't as appealing to me, but I can't argue that Buchman writes a hell of a tale. The suspense inherent in wartime operations is what drives those elements of the plot and Buchman does it extremely well. He imbues every scene with an air of authenticity and realism that is, at times, truly terrifying. It was much more believable as a story than the plotline of the previous book, if perhaps not quite as entertaining on a personal level.

I've become quite a fan of this series and the characters in it. Every element is just damn good. Even those things that annoy or frustrate me, or characters who really rub me raw, work well within the framework of the story and the world of the series. Things like the extensive military jargon, which is often hard for me to follow, lends itself to the feeling of authenticity. And Kee, who infuriated and offended me at every turn in the beginning, was still someone very easy to imagine in the real world. That's adroit storytelling, and it provided a well-balanced, solid, entertaining read. I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series.


The Night Stalkers Series:

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Night Stalkers, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Sourcebooks Casablanca publisher Sourcebooks via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Captain Emily Beale may have been born to fly, but she chose to both be the best and fly the best. She's the only woman to ever qualify to fly with the Night Stalkers, the Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), flying Black Hawk helicopters in combat in service to her country. In achieving that goal she's fought tirelessly to be perfect, to fit into a world where only men dare tread, fighting more than a war - battling stereotype and prejudice just as fiercely.

She is a triumph and a credit to her country. It's all she has ever wanted to be. So when Emily is suddenly pulled from her division and brought stateside for a security detail that equates to little more than babysitting the First Lady of the United States, Emily is...less than happy for several reasons. Not the least of which is that she can't turn down a direct request from her Commander in Chief, even though she grew up with him.

Still, she's not the only one fuming over her new assignment.

Major Mark "Viper" Henderson is furious when his best combat pilot is yanked from his command by his superiors without so much as a by-your-leave and little in the way of explanation, apology, or information. He respects the hell out of Beale's skills with a Hawk and there isn't another pilot he trusts more to get the job done. Her reassignment will create a hole where her talent once shone.

And he shouldn't have kissed her. That wasn't the brightest move he's ever made. Not only because it was the height of impropriety and broke several significantly punitive regulations, but because it was motivated by a painful ball of frustration, fear, and fantasy that he's worked hard to keep under wraps. Plus, now that he's tasted her, felt her against him, he has memory to add to his dreams and imagination. Memory of the woman he loves and can never have.

He shouldn't have kissed her. But despite knowing that to be true, it doesn't stop him from digging to find out where she's been sent, and it doesn't prevent him from calling in every favor he's owed to rush to her side when he gets word that she's in trouble. Not even the mighty force of the U.S. military can keep him from her when he finds out there's a killer out there, one who sees Emily as nothing more than collateral damage. And very expendable.


I debated reading this book. Prejudice almost had me dismissing it out of hand. I'm sad to say I don't have a lot of trust in male authors when it comes to writing romance fiction that works for me. I have my reasons. Combining those reasons with a lack of interest in the military elements of this story made me more than a little leery to pick this up.

I'm sorry about that...you know...now. Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa! I loved this book! Pulse-pounding action, danger, wicked suspense...great characters, intense emotion, hot sex, conflict, gunfire, helicopters... Wow, what a rush!

From the opening scene, I adored Emily. What a perfect way Buchman had of slamming his readers into her life and addressing head-on several of the very prejudices and unlikely conveniences that would make this book more than a little implausible in both concept and construct. And it was implausible. Almost ridiculously so on more than one level throughout the book, if not downright impossible without resulting in several criminal charges and possibly a court-martial or two.

I had no illusions about that when I was reading. Come on, the list of highly unlikely events, circumstances, defining moments, and character traits stacked up higher than the Washington Monument. It was just such a kick-ass read I couldn't find it in me to care overmuch. Seriously, I know I should have cared, I know I usually do care, but in this book I enjoyed the read despite it all (though it did affect my rating).

It was Emily and Mark. I loved both of them. Emily from the moment she shoots the laptop and Mark from the moment he showed up and spent the night in absolute silence. Okay, okay, I entertained lusty, deliciously impure thoughts about his fine self long before that, but that's when I fell in love with the guy. And together? Now that's what I call chemistry.

The story was great, too. Taking the book at face value, the characters were layered and nicely fleshed out and the plot was complex and had nice balance. The romance threads were laden with emotion, tension, and passion, with some impressive areas of genuine relationship conflict from both internal and external forces.

The suspense was solid throughout the book, but faltered a bit for me during the revelation stages of the conflict resolution. The motivations and disclosed endgame of the characters involved didn't exactly wow me with its Master Criminal-level of intellect. Seemed an awful lot of high-risk gyrations to go through to end up in mostly the same place, really. But that didn't detract from how pleased I was with the main characters' journey in uncovering the truth. Very nicely done.

Let me be honest, I still have that prejudice about male authors writing romance to my taste. It's long-standing and dug in through years of personal experience. Not much I can do about that. There is one thing I plan to do, though...read the next book in The Night Stalkers series when Buchman has it available. Call it my civic duty or something. That works.