It is final! The May 2018 Voter Chosen Book of the Month!
We thank you all for participating in our poll!
The top two will go on to Book of the Year!
FIRST PLACE:
We are happy to announce the Winner of our Voter Chosen Book of the Month is:
Whisper by Tal Bauer
Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Whisper
AUTHOR: Tal Bauer
PUBLISHER: Self Published
RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2018
LENGTH: 951 pages
BLURB:
The truth is complicated.
On September 11th, 2001, Kris Caldera was a junior member of the CIA’s Alec Station, the unit dedicated to finding and stopping Osama Bin Laden.
They failed.
Ten days later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team, driven to avenge the ghosts that haunted him and the nation he’d let down. On the battlefield, he meets Special Forces Sergeant David Haddad. David – Arab American, Muslim, and gay – becomes the man Kris loves, the man he lives for, and the man he kills for, through the long years of the raging wars.
David Haddad thought he’d be an outsider his whole life. Too American for the Middle East, too Arab for America, and too gay to be Muslim. It took Kris to bring the parts of himself together, to make him the man he’d always wanted to be. But the War on Terror wreaks havoc on David’s soul, threatening to shatter the fragile peace he’s finally found with Kris.
When a botched mission rips David from Kris’s life, Kris’s world falls into ruin and ash. A shell of the man who once loved with the strength to shake both the CIA and the world, he marks time on the edges of his life. The days bleed together, meaningless after losing the love of his life.
After being captured, tortured to the edge of his life, and left for dead by his comrades, David doesn’t know how much of himself is left. He vanished one day in the tribal belt of Pakistan, and the man who walks out almost a decade later is someone new: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.
But strange rumblings are whispering through the CIA. Intelligence from multiple sources overseas points to something new. Something deadly, and moving to strike the United States. Intercepts say an army from Khorasan, the land of the dead where the Apocalypse of Islam will rise, is coming.
And, at the head of this army, a shadowy figure the US hasn’t seen before: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.
David is coming home.
SECOND PLACE:
Unbroken (The Protectors #12) by Sloane Kennedy
REVIEWED by Jen B.
TITLE: Unbroken
SERIES: The Protectors #12
AUTHOR: Sloane Kennedy
PUBLISHER: Sloane Kennedy
LENGTH: 2075kb
RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2018
BLURB:
Everything was supposed to go back to normal when I was rescued. It hasn’t. And I’m starting to think it never will because I don’t even know what normal is anymore…
It’s been two years since Aleks Silva was rescued by his older brother from the dark underworld of sex trafficking and every day since then has been a battle. Leaving the house, interacting with people, even doing something as boring as deciding what clothes to wear or what to eat for breakfast are tasks that most people take for granted. But for Aleks, they’re torture. Because freedom and choice are things that once came at a steep price and survival meant submitting to the whims of those who only saw him as a possession and plaything.
Until there was one man who saw him as something more…
I knew from the moment I saw him that I was going to get him out. But I also knew once I did, I’d need to let him go…
He’s known as Vaughn and nothing more. His job is to make sure secrets don’t get out and the possessions he’s been tasked with guarding never escape and tell their story. After eight years in a world where innocent kids are used to feed the darkest of depravities, Vaughn has seen things that would break even the strongest man. But he’s played it smart and built up a wall between himself and the darkness that threatens to consume him.
It wasn’t until he met a young man who had to be a thousand times stronger to survive the life he was forced into as a child that the first crack appeared in his carefully constructed wall.
Vaughn’s only job was to make sure young Aleks Silva remained the ugly little secret of one of the most powerful men in Chicago. It was one job he was more than happy to fail at, and when he eliminated the threat against Aleks and set him free, he was sure their paths would never cross again.
But fate has other plans…
Vaughn is the only man from my other life who never had a starring role in my nightmares… but he’s been in every one of my dreams. And I don’t know why…
When Aleks is suddenly abducted after leaving work one quiet spring evening, he’s certain he’ll never see his brother and family again. But terror quickly turns to relief when a familiar face once again comes to his rescue, along with all the feelings he’s always had but never quite understood around the dangerous, older Vaughn. Certain that Vaughn will make everything okay again like he did once before, Aleks knows he doesn’t even need to ask Vaughn to take him home. But when he does anyway, nothing he’s ever experienced prepares him for Vaughn’s answer… or the brutal betrayal that comes along with it.
I’m sorry, Aleks, I can’t do that.
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault Against a Minor
*Can be read as a standalone novel but if you have not read any books in this series, you may want to at least read Book 6, Atonement, first. Atonement is the story of Aleks’s brother, Dante, and both brothers appear in each other’s books so it is helpful to know their backstories.
The Protectors series crosses over with some of my other series, so for the most enjoyment, they should be read in order, but it is not required. You can find the correct reading order at the beginning of each book. I’ve also bundled all my series in the correct reading order under the title of A Family Chosen: The Protectors and Barrettis.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!
Here is the final vote total: