Reviewed by Kimberley
TITLE: Alpha Protect
SERIES: J.T.’s Bar # 5
AUTHOR: Sue Brown
PUBLISHER: One Hat Press
LENGTH: 244 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2020
BLURB:
What kind of courage does it take to travel two thousand miles just to say hello to a man who doesn’t know you exist? At thirty years old and never been kissed, Walker is about to find out.
After a rocky start to his life in the agency, newly trained operative Walker takes the biggest chance of his life before his first mission. He returns to J.T.’s Bar to bare his virgin soul to a handsome former operative he’s only seen once.
Since Mark left the agency, he’s spent years nursing an unrequited crush on a former co-worker. He’s left with the realization he’s facing middle-age alone. Except here’s this shy, huge man from the agency waiting to talk to him in J.T.’s Bar.
The last thing they need to hear is someone is killing Mark’s former team. Against his wishes, the agency insists Mark goes into hiding and Walker is assigned the task of getting him to a safe house. Can a rookie operative like Walker protect Mark long enough to get him to safety—and eventually into his arms?
REVIEW:
This is the 5th book in this series. This book gives us Walker and Mark. Walker is a member of the infamous Valentine team and Mark is ex-Agency member turned physical therapist.
I was so very glad that this story was written. I was really hoping that Mark gets another chance at love after the man he was in love with (unrequited) married someone else. In this story, Mark gets a second chance at love with Walker, a current member of the Agency.
I adore Walker’s character. Walker is a man who longs for the ‘together forever type’ of love. He’s big, beautiful, sweet, and shy. I like that Walker’s character is this gentle giant yet innocent badass warrior. He didn’t seek Mark out only to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Walker wanted to build something meaningful with him.
I love how the author also keeps the characters from the other books as peripheral characters. It brings a consistency to the storyline that makes it so much easier to follow the sequence of events.
Even though I was looking forward to Mark’s story, the action in this book wasn’t as high as it is in the other books. Yes, there’s a bit of action but I felt it takes a bit of a back seat to the developing romance between these two men. That made it all the more better for me because I felt that relationship needed exploring more than the action did.
The story flowed along rather nicely; I liked the pace. It didn’t drag anywhere and although the revelation of the culprit(s) was a bit anticlimactic, but that’s okay because the story still played out beautifully by leaving the opening for the next story in the series to be told.
I really enjoy this author’s work and this series has emerged as one of my favorites.
RATING: 
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