Reviewed by Jay V.

TITLE: Sticks & Stones

SERIES: Cut & Run #2

AUTHORS: Abigail Roux

PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing

LENGTH: 337 Pages

RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2024, Re-Release

BLURB:

In order to survive in the wilderness, they’ll have to survive each other.

After the case they just closed, it’s unsurprising FBI Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett are having trouble passing their psych evaluations. The only thing worse than a near-death experience is trying to lie to a shrink about it. And the only thing worse than that is being stuck on desk duty after failing. The two of them are soon ordered to take a vacation, before their exasperated coworkers finish what the serial killer started.

Hoping to bolster their partnership—in every sense of the word—Ty invites Zane to visit his family in West Virginia, and Zane accepts. The mountains can’t be that different from Texas, right? Snakes are snakes.

When they join Ty’s father and brother for a hike deep into the woods, the Grady family’s dysfunction quickly becomes the least of their worries. The weather is bad, the wildlife is bloodthirsty, and their fellow hikers are ready to break out the banjos. Zane and Ty still have each other, but whether that will make the trip—or break it—remains to be seen.

*This is a limited re-release of the original series, without changes. Some aspects of the story are now dated, and an updated version will be published at a later date.*

REVIEW:

The continuation of the long favored series is now available again, a book each week from the beginning.

As I began to re-read this book, the musical Into the Woods popped into my head (not for the woods part). The 2nd half of the show being about what happens after the Happily Ever After. That’s where this book lies. Ty & Zane are sorta together and they are having to navigate the meaning of their relationship, if they can even come to call it that themselves.

They need to get their lives better in order and, frankly, clear their psych evals to show they’re stable. This plays out in a trip to Ty’s family home, a forced vacation that including hiking into the woods to go camping. Ty’s father, brother, Zane, and Ty all head out into something more than they suspected. This is a great backdrop to test the relationship. Ty’s brother helps them walk through some of their issues and clear their heads. They’ll need it to keep afloat.

This is a nice transitional book as they work through some of their dynamics. It’s not the central focus as the story is good in itself but the underlying layer. What I love about these books is that they are not the perfect couple, things don’t always go their way, and they struggle to navigate their lives. Both characters have distinct, fun qualities about them that keep the reader interested in them. They are somewhat boneheaded but it’s part of their charm? They have a real yen/yang dynamic yet they’re sometimes the same in their thinking. It’s this dynamic that has drawn so many to read these books, including myself. Some things are resolved, others are not, but it’s a fun, wild ride.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon