Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    Serve and Protect

AUTHOR:     Shelly Connors

PUBLISHER:  Publish Green

LENGTH:     183 Pages

BLURB:

It’s been five years since twins Kolby and Kaleb Bailey moved north from Texas. Kolby trying to escape her abusive husband and Kaleb trying to get out of a corrupt business partnership. Detectives Dean Davis and R.J. Kennedy live and breathe their job, and as partners they spend most of their time together working. The twins and detectives lives intersect when R.J. forces Dean to go on a double date with him and they decide to take their dates to the Baileys’ restaurant.

Here To Serve is a different kind of establishment that has great food and dancing. On the Friday night of their double date R.J. and Dean both find something that they didn’t realize they were looking for. A confrontation with a disgruntled patron, and one of the Here to Serve employees being beaten in the parking lot, leads to the Baileys seeing a whole lot more of the detectives. Even though R.J. and Dean aren’t working the case, they can’t seem to keep their hands out of it. One accident leads to another and then to tragedy, but through it all Kolby and Kaleb continue to run their restaurant while trying to help their friend, Jason, recover from his beating and his loss. As Jason lies in a coma his world is turned upside down while the detectives work to find out who put him in the hospital.

Sifting through the evidence causes both the twins and detectives to deal with past and present emotions. Can Kolby separate R.J. Kennedy, the handsome detective, from her abusive husband? Can R.J. come to terms with his past and move forward into a relationship with Kolby? They both have their reasons for trying to stay far away from each other, but sometimes the sparks between them are too much of a pull to be avoided.

Detective Dean Davis moved north from Atlanta after his co-workers found him at a gay bar and decided they didn’t agree with his alternative lifestyle. After his experience in Atlanta, Dean hasn’t told anyone his secret and keeping it was easy until meeting Kaleb Bailey. Kaleb let his interest in Dean be known, and the feeling is mutual. If Dean succumbs to his feelings, will he get the same treatment he received in Atlanta? If he shares his secret with R.J. will he lose his friendship and respect? The group of strangers are brought together for a reason, but it takes loss in order for them to find the courage to move forward and understand why it’s so important.

REVIEW:

I’m not sure how I’m managing to do it, but I feel like I’ve been getting the cream of the crop when it comes to newly published first time writers in this genre! With Shelly Connors’ book, Serve and Protect, I’m happy to say that the track record remains unchanged. I absolutely loved this book! It is a whodunit type of book, complete with police detectives, an evilly homophobic mother and tragedy. Happily there is also some romance. If you’re looking for hot sex scenes, there aren’t any, so you might want to look elsewhere if you can’t live without them. I must say though that the book doesn’t suffer from the lack of them at all! It is an excellent book!

Detectives Dean Davis and R.J. Kennedy have been working as partners since shortly after Dean joined the force. Dean came north from Atlanta after some of his coworkers saw him at a gay bar and outed him to the department. His coworkers didn’t agree with his alternative lifestyle and basically he was forced out of his job. He hasn’t mentioned to anyone, including his partner R.J. because he is afraid the same thing will happen again. R.J. is working his way through every bimbo in town, avoiding commitment at all costs. There is a reason for it, but we don’t find out until close to the end of the book, and I’m not doing any spoilers.

One night when Dean is coerced into yet another double date with R.J., the two floozies that R.J.’s sister fixed him up with leave the restaurant they are at in a total huff. The guys hang out because the place is kind of cool. There is a dance floor in the restaurant, and any customer can ask any employee for a dance, and the employee has to dance with them, regardless of gender, etc. The employees love it because they get dancing lessons and there is a different theme night every night of the week. The customers love it because they have willing partners to dance with. Of course, it stops at dancing only, and there are two bouncers to stop any funny business!  Of course that doesn’t stop jealousy and the night the guys are there they witness a guy try to go after one of the male employees, Jason, who is dancing with the guy’s girlfriend to a slow song.

Dean has been there before and his eyes are drawn like always to the sexy Kaleb Bailey.  And even though he is avoiding a serious relationship like the plague, R.J.’s eyes are drawn to Kolby Bailey when she single handedly handles the guy going after Jason.  When the two detectives spend most of the evening dancing with a large number of women, they also catch the twin’s eyes. That might have been the end of it, but Jason is found at the end of the night beaten severely behind a dumpster and left for dead.  Was it the meathead from earlier or someone else?  The detectives are now on the case.  Along the way other tragedy will strike, the detectives will have to deal with another set of detectives who are totally homophobic, and as I mentioned there might be a little romance going on!

As most of the stuff above was in the books description blurb, I don’t think I did any major spoilers, and I’m not about to start now. All I’ll say is the book gets better and better with each page. The book was very well written and characters and background were well developed. I would have liked to see a little more about where it was taking place, because if it ever said, I missed it!

I very, very highly recommend this new author and her book. At the end of the book there is a short introduction to book two, Dust in the Wind, which continues to follow the characters from this book. I sure hope it is done soon! Do yourself a favor and hit One Click on this one. A good whodunit storyline, with great characters. I know it will be on my must re-read list!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

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