Jolie Benoit left her old life behind to become an agent of the Underlight. Training under Sergeant Wesley Haukon, she’s honing her combat skills, all the while coping with the intense sexual attraction she feels for Hauk. She keeps their friendship casual, but when his high school sweetheart transfers into their division, Jolie finds herself grappling with jealousy.
The Underlight gave Hauk a purpose, but he can’t escape his past completely. The physical and emotional scars from the fire that killed seven fellow Army Rangers will mark him forever. Jolie sends his protective instincts into overdrive, but he’s convinced he’ll never be worthy of her love.
Hauk is determined to keep Jolie from harm. But when the Order of Ananke ambushes them with a new weapon that neutralizes Hauk, making him vulnerable, it’s Jolie who must tap into her hidden strengths to rescue him—or risk losing him forever…
In the review of the first book, I said that I wanted to read the second instalment even I had issues with the first book. I requested it and I am so glad I did. Although I question the decision to make this into a series rather than one book (although the love tale is well developed, I feel the back story has very little purpose in progressing the tale), I did come out of this tale with a little bit of a clearer picture of the world it’s all set in. I love reading about Hauk and Jolie’s budding relationship but don’t expect there to be a resolution of their tale in this one; there is one more to go!
In this book, I really struggled with Jolie. At the start of the book, she wanted to keep Hauk in the friend zone. It irritated me because, even though I wanted her to just get on with it, I couldn’t imagine myself not having the same thoughts. I love that she can see beyond the scars but he wouldn’t be an easy man to be with anyway. Aside the physical scars, he also had the blackout rages, the mental scars and the fugitive status. Luckily for the book, she changed her mind quite quickly. I think the “push” she needed was the reappearance of Hauk’s ex, a perky little annoyance that I really didn’t enjoy in the book. Yes, it was nice to have a link to his past, to the man prior to the accident, but she was fricking irritating and she got more so as the tale progressed. She did me a favour though and made Jolie get all jealous and realise that she actually had a considerable amount of non-friend feelings for Hauk. But then Jolie got all pissy because she realised that she may be a little too late and started being a bit over hysterical with Hauk. As I say, I struggled with her because she was up and down like a yo-yo. I didn’t enjoy the reappearance of the boyband singer Paul. Yes, I saw the purpose of him but he is such a tool! I hope he doesn’t appear in the next one…
Hauk I will never struggle with. I love Hauk and really wanted Jolie to see past the scars and want to be with the man within. That man wanted not only to protect her but to give her the skills to protect herself. He trained her, supported her and made her a part of his team. Everyone in the book expected them to be together and the only people out of the loop seemed to be those two. What I loved about Hauk in this one was that he seemed to realise that there were certain people he didn’t have to hide from. Yes, he had horrific scarring but he finally started to see that some people were capable of looking beyond it. Of course seeing the ex for the first time was a bit nerve wracking and the scene where Jolie supported him through that meeting was possibly one of the best in the book for me. Usually I love the drawn out love stories but I just think the man has suffered enough damn it!!! A lot happens in this book apart from the love story. We find out more about Hauk’s past, more about the mysterious bad-guys and more about the structure of the Underlight…. it’s pretty busy!
Overall, I absolutely adored the blossoming love story between Hauk and Jolie. No, it isn’t an easy love story as the man has a helluva lot of issues to overcome and of course Jolie has to learn to deal with them too. I can’t believe that I have to wait until May to see how this all pans out… how will they finally end up together? How will they finally defeat those freaky magic men who I don’t really understand? And will the annoying ex and Paul run away together in the first page of the next book so I NEVER have to read about them again?? So many questions……
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