Reviewed by Taylor

TITLE: Ball & Chain

SERIES: Cut & Run

AUTHOR: Abigail Roux

PUBLISHER: Riptide

LENGTH: 306 Pages

BLURB: Home from their unexpected deployment, the former members of Marine Force Recon team Sidewinder rejoin their loved ones and try to pick up the pieces of the lives they were forced to leave behind. Ty Grady comes home to Zane Garrett, only to find that everything around him has changed—even the men he went to war with. He barely has time to adjust before his brother, Deuce, asks Ty to be his best man. But that isn’t all Deuce asks Ty to do, and Ty must call for backup to deal with the business issues of Deuce’s future father-in-law.
Nick O’Flaherty and Kelly Abbott join Ty and Zane at the wedding on an island in Scotland, thinking they’re there to assuage Deuce’s paranoia. But when bodies start dropping and boats start sinking, the four men get more involved with the festivities than they’d ever planned to.
With the clock ticking and the killer just as stuck on the isolated island as they are, Ty and Zane must navigate a veritable minefield of family, friends, and foes to stop the whole island from being destroyed.

REVIEW:

So, Ty and Zane are back again and I was curious how this 8^th book would go considering the ending of the last book, the new side series with Kelly & Nick, and the book before the series finale.  And I have to say I’m seriously disappointed in the wasted opportunity and poor editing.  It didn’t make me enraged like the last book did,  but it did sadden me with how Ty and Zane have just been pushed to the side, in a way, and become that series that perhaps has gone on too long.  This series most certainly wasn’t my first in this genre, but Zane is probably the first character in m/m that I deeply fell in love with and I wanted so much for this to end on a high note.  I didn’t hate it by any means, but it lacked any emotional pull and I was quite frankly bored to death.  There were also quite a few choices in scenes that left me questioning the reason and the plot felt too fanfiction-y and convoluted.

This is the thing about series or even standalones for me in romance.  Sure, I’d love it if both characters and plot were outstanding, but if both aren’t, I really need one to impact me in a large way.  The author isn’t really great, in my opinion, with plot, but I’ve always enjoyed her characters, intimate scenes, and dialogue.  But…this book lacked all of that and I was left with a big Nothing Burger.  In my opinion, this is the weakest  book in the series.

First off, the editing in this is SO bad.  Seriously.  The repetition killed me.  For example:

Smirk – used 26 times

Swallow hard/Swallow past the knot – 24 times

Chuckle – 25 times

Laugh – 100 times

Licked/Licked lips – 21

Narrow/Narrowed eyes – 39 times

It was so incredibly distracting and felt lazy.  But here’s the other thing about the editing and then consistency.  It’s mentioned several times that Ty is a changed man after his deployment. “Ty hadn’t come back the same person. The more time they spent together, the clearer that was to Zane. He smiled less, he joked less, he was quicker to strike.” He’s come back haunted, the light in his eyes diminished, etc.  But that makes no sense in regards to what the reader is given because he is constantly smirking, laughing, chuckling, snorting, what have you.  How am I supposed to believe he’s been greatly affected by this last deployment when you haven’t written the character that way?

There were also a lot of corny phrases that made me laugh and I’m sure that wasn’t the author’s intention.

“…like a balm on an open wound he hadn’t realized was there.”

“…like a drop of water to a dying man”

“No one had lifted Zane’s burden for him; he had shed it himself, like a caterpillar unfolding its wings to become a butterfly. Ty would never tell Zane he thought of him like a butterfly, of course.”

“He was on the edge of completely falling apart. Thank Christ Ty was there to keep him together, just like he’d always been.”

“Ty was wearing a red Santa hat with a white fluffball on the end, and the fluffball hit Clancy in the head when they hugged, but she didn’t seem to care.” 

Because being hit by a fluffball is reason to break down and cry? The paaaain! Fluff in the face! Fluff in the face! 

Now let’s get back to another wasted opportunity that I felt would have helped me enjoy this book more.  Ty and Zane were separated for 6 months.  And 6 months after a huge bomb of coming out on Zane’s part and him alone without Ty OR any of the Sidewinder guys he’s grown to love as friends.  I needed those 6 months described to me in some way, something to give me an emotional connection to what he went through and to what he and Ty felt during those 6 months apart.  Everything runs so smoothly for these guys when they are reunited it just felt…meh.  Even the small amount of intimacy scenes didn’t do anything for me.  There was one that I guess was fairly hot, but because it felt like a show and a little Sex A,B,Cs I kept waiting for something more interesting to happen between them sexually.  And you can’t keep writing Deuce calling during sex.  It’s not cute anymore. These guys used to have personalities and they felt very cardboard cutouts in this book.  Lots of reminiscing about past experiences with nothing new to the table.  They were going through the motions and I didn’t feel Zane in this book.  Just a name with some dialogue.  I truly didn’t feel anything while reading Ty and Zane, and I used to in the earlier books, and I imagine that’s largely due to the lack of tension between them now.

I did think some of the scenes between Nick and Ty were great, but the lack of consistency with Ty read very strange to me.  He seemed extremely needy, downtrodden, whiny, etc. and it threw me honestly.  But when they were their friendship, I liked those parts.  That felt genuine.

Then there’s the plot.  I think I got what the author was going for in that regards.  It felt very Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, mixed with Clue, and a whole lot of the TV miniseries Harper’s Island. But inspiration is one thing, but this felt like fanfiction.  Hell, even on Harper’s Island the guests all arrive for a wedding.  It felt so much like those three stories that it became distracting rather than fun.  And for the love of holy why, why did that plot go off the rails like that?  Just why?  If it had been a fun little weekend murder mystery caper, I really could have enjoyed myself.  But with every reveal it just went further into Stupid-ville.  Sometimes restraint is a beautiful thing.  Just saying.

By the way, side note: the reason for picking that Maid of Honor was quite possibly one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.

Then there is Kelly and Nick.  Not that I’m all enraged or anything, but I think it was a disservice to both couples to have them in there as much as they were in a Ty and Zane book, especially the second to last book.  Another reason why I felt a lack of connection with the supposed main couple.  I honestly was floored with how much Nick and Kelly were in this, and not only that, but a HUGE moment happens and it bugged the crap out of me for two reasons.  One it took away from Ty and Zane’s moments and two, I can’t see how the author can’t not revisit that in Nick and Kelly’s own book, so we’ll just get more repetition. And surprisingly, Nick and Kelly were funnier, more charming, and likable than Ty and Zane, although I do feel like once again Nick has an unnerving personality change.

So, overall, I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it, and I probably won’t remember a damn thing about it in a few days.  Disappointing way to start closing out a series of two of my most beloved m/m characters.  I’m really hoping for a beautiful ending with the 9^th book, though.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Riptide