Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: Mercenary Trust
SERIES: Unit Alpha Book 1
AUTHOR: Frey Ortega
PUBLISHER: Evernight Publishing
LENGTH: 125 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 8, 2016
BLURB:
Two years ago, Daniel Walsh’s life went to shit. He found out his boyfriend of six years was actually cheating on him and got laid off from his job. So Daniel, no longer having anything tying him down to the city, decided to travel the world…
But then reality rears its ugly head. Now twenty-six, with no work and no money, Daniel has moved back to the city where a visit to his mother brings him face-to-face with a certain Nicolas Castillo.
Nick is a thirty-year-old ex-Marine just trying to live a civilian life after military service … or so he says. The truth is that he’s a member of an elite, black ops mercenary team called Unit Alpha.
When a mission brings Nick closer to people in Daniel’s past, he can’t believe the good-natured man has such close ties to some nasty people. But it also unleashes a protective instinct inside Nick unlike any he’s ever felt before.
With so many suspicious happenings in Daniel’s past, how can he earn the mercenary’s trust?
REVIEW:
Two years after leaving the country following a bad break up and its aftermath, Daniel Walsh has finally come home but things aren’t much better than when he left. Sure he had some great experiences but now he’s stuck without a job and a bank account quickly being drained of funds. When he goes home to face the music and his mother’s chastisement for the time he spent away, he was expecting a lecture but what he got instead was an unexpected run in with his mother’s new neighbor. Daniel pushes all of Nick’s buttons and he’s more than willing to get to know the younger man but things are rarely easy in his line of work and when it turns out his new dating prospect is connected with his new job, he’s conflicted. On the one hand, he’s fairly certain Daniel is innocent of any wrongdoing but on the other, the company he used to work for is neck deep in corruption and Daniel’s ex is their top suspect…
On the whole I liked this one but there were parts I enjoyed more than others. I really liked the premise of the story and I was really interested in the men that make up Unit Alpha. All of the guys seem like really interesting characters from what little you got to see but it’s a good mix of guys that I look forward to getting to know as the series continues. The story itself starts off with a bit of a bang (and a black eye!) and I was drawn into the drama surrounding Daniel’s break up with is ex. I find I totally agreed with him here: there are a lot of things I can forgive but cheating isn’t one of them. If infidelity bothers you, nothing is shown and the part is over fairly quickly; I hate cheating in my books but this didn’t bother me at all but I’m at least letting you know its here.
I liked Daniel quite a bit; he has some self esteem issues and a bit of a temper but he was a sweet guy that spent the years he took for himself helping other people instead. I also liked that he wasn’t your typical twink character and that he’d ‘let himself go’ while overseas. Nick seemed like a great guy, too, and it was fairly obvious that under the hardened military man was a guy that cared deeply for others even as he tried to keep a part of himself back. While I didn’t see a complete fit between him and Daniel, I could see the two men developing a deeper relationship in later books.
The story itself was decent but with the length of the book, things obviously moved a bit faster than I would’ve liked and things weren’t completely resolved at the end though the book ended on a solid note. Overall I enjoyed the story but I do wish things had been drawn out a little more or, at the very least, I could’ve seen more development with Daniel and Nick’s relationship. Still, this was a pretty good start to a new series and I’m looking forward to seeing where the author takes things from here.
RATING: 
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