Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Trusting The Army Captain
AUTHOR: Noelle Keaton
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound
LENGTH: 42 Pages
BLURB:
When it comes to choosing between advancing his career in the army or being truthful with the man he loves, Patrick learns everything ultimately boils down to trust.
Ambitious army captain, Patrick Bosworth, is eager for advancement in his army career so that he can live up to his family’s distinguished legacy in the army. But having been passed over for promotion to major twice already, Patrick fears his career has stalled and he worries he’ll never match the accomplishments of other family members, especially his brother, a bronze star recipient recently promoted to lieutenant colonel. When a superior office suggests a way to get the promotion that involves gathering information on a fellow army captain in the medical corps, Patrick reluctantly agrees to participate. He regrets the assignment almost immediately, especially when he falls for Craig, the guy he’s supposed to be investigating.
When he forms a passionate and intense bond with Craig, Patrick finds it difficult to separate where his professional obligations end and his personal feelings begin. After working for so long to prove himself a worthy member of the place his family holds in the army’s history, Patrick has to decide if finally finding the love of his life is worth sacrificing advancement in the army, or even giving up his career in the army itself.
REVIEW:
I don’t know that there’s too much left for me to say about this book as the blurb pretty much tells you exactly what happens.
Patrick, the army captain, bugged me a bit right from the beginning as the first few lines of the story are of him mentally chanting – it’s not fair, over and over. And you know what, I felt for the guy. It’s got to be really hard to be overlooked for not just the promotion but recognition multiple times as you continue to do all the right things. Especially when the rest of your family seems to be made up of perfect medal collecting soldiers. But he just felt a tad too prepared to wallow in self pity for someone who is so focused on advancement. A bit of a sooki-la-la as my six year old would say. Then when he is asked to spy on Craig he seems to throw himself headfirst into a full on relationship with the man, with what I felt was minimum concern for how it could affect his career.
However, having said that Patrick didn’t continue to annoy me throughout the story. It was just my initial impression of him that I didn’t really like. Once he was in a relationship with Craig and believed him to be innocent I can see that he was pretty much stuck at that point. I actually enjoyed the two of them together. In fact I was reading along and at one point had the thought that for such a short story the author did a really good job with it.
But, and this was a rather significant but for me, I didn’t like the end.
This next bit may be considered a slight spoiler.
Rest assured, the men end up together and I agree that Craig would be super pissed upon finding out he’s been lied to, if they want to break up for a while, that’s fine with me too. I understand. But this one stupid line just made me stop and say – heh? “I haven’t been able to find what we’ve shared with anyone else and it made me start wondering if I hadn’t been too hasty.” So I realize that that’s one line I’ve just fed you without any other background to put it in context but it just read to me as – I figured I’d forgive you because I’ve looked but I can’t find anyone to replace you with. Now I know that that is one sentence in the whole story and I guess I could have interpreted it wrong but for some reason (perhaps irrational reason) it really annoyed me and ruined the ending of the book. For me.
So basically, it was a fairly good story, there’s every chance that my issue with the end is just another case of – “Donna requires an unrealistic fairytale HEA and needs to get a better grip on reality.”
RATING: 
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