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AngylMuses

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Shield by Max Hawthorn - Book Review

Shield (Men of Hidden Creek)Shield by Max Hawthorn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Max Hawthorn has delivered a Five-alarm read!!!

We start the story in Aleppo Syria - okay my interest was piqued right there - a CIA intelligence nerd (read their best hacker) named Fox Walker sent to a war zone to retrieve intel and so very obviously in the DEEP end and out of his comfort zone. He's described as a lithe, lanky redhead, and so very obviously out of place in the desert. Enter Spec Ops Captain Axel Ford, yes that IS his real name, the Green Beret in charge of making sure Fox gets in, gets his info, and gets out alive. Extra smoking HOT Captain Ford, the kind of guy that makes Fox sit up and bark! Except he's military, Fox is CIA and Fox is there to do a job. Things go squirrelly, as things are wont to do, and Fox finds himself getting shot at and blown up but he does get out of there alive, thanks to sexy Captain 'Probably Straight' Ford. But not without some battle scars in the form of unacknowledged PTSD.

Eight years later Fox is still the CIA's best hacker and he's currently in a little town outside of Houston, Texas, called Hidden Creek, trying to track down yet another terrorist - this one of the variety that likes to make things go BOOM - through his data trails. Hot in pursuit of his bad guy who does Fox run into but Captain Axel Ford - now Special Agent in Charge of the local FBI office. And don't the sparks just fly? or was it the building exploding? Turns out they're both after the same guy, Axel's domestic terrorist is Fox's international terrorist.

Axel and Fox find themselves working together yet again, and the heat from the desert country of Syria flares even hotter in good old Texas - everything is bigger there, after all. But they're also working to stop a man with an agenda and a link to Fox's past before he hurts more people. How many more lives are on the line? How many more buildings will he blow up before they find him? And when they do, will they be forced to lay it all on the line, lay their lives down, to stop him just as they're discovering what they have is worth living for.

I thoroughly enjoyed Max Hawthorn's no nonsense writing style. I felt like I was in that tent in Syria, the burning building in Hidden Creek, the speeding car as it was being shot at, in the bedroom when things _really_ combust. Their action sequences were exciting and fun, their writing crisp and clean. Definitely going to read more by this author as it comes out!

Book series blurb:

Welcome to Hidden Creek, Texas, where the heart knows what it wants, and where true love lives happily ever after. Every Men of Hidden Creek novel can be read on its own, but keep an eye out for familiar faces around town!

It's a collection of shared world novels with authors Ed Davis, HJ Welch, Avery Ford, Max Hawthorn, and Ian Lewis. The books are stand alones with HEA that don't have to be read in any particular order.

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