
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Unbroken Heroes #5
Pages: 216
Published by Anna Hackett on January 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads
The last thing he wants is to hunt a dangerous fugitive in the Alaskan wilderness, especially with a tough, stubborn US marshal.
Parker Conroy moved to Alaska to be alone. His military career in Ghost Ops ended with an explosion and three torturous weeks of captivity. It’s left him scarred, wanting to avoid people, and hating being touched.
When US Marshal Jenna Sheriden knocks on his door, he has no time for the attractive marshal. But she isn’t taking no for an answer.
A dangerous fugitive is on the loose, and he happens to be a rogue Ghost Ops soldier.
Jenna Sheriden lives and breathes being a marshal. Her past has left her with something to prove. She has zero interest in love, relationships, or anything that slows her down.
She needs help hunting a deadly murderer. She needs Parker Conroy.
The gruff, lean loner radiates a dark intensity she can’t ignore, but he has the skills to help her track down her quarry. Thrust together, they’re sharing the same bed, the same tent, and working together every hour of the day.
As they draw closer to catching the killer, Jenna sees under Park’s scarred exterior to the man beneath. A man who tempts her in ways no one ever has before. A man who will do anything to keep her safe.
If they survive this hunt, then Jenna knows she’ll have the biggest challenge of all—convincing her scarred hero to take a chance on love.
My Review:
I was all in on The Hero She Loves from the very first page for two reasons. One, it’s an Alaska story and I always love stories set in “the 907” (Alaska’s Area Code – still) because I used to live in Anchorage. I still tell Alaska stories, so I enjoy it when someone else tells one to me.
Especially when it’s an author I love.
Second, I always love a romance of equals, especially when the female protagonist is every bit as proactive as her male partner. I want heroes who go out and get it done, not wait for someone to do it for them – especially when it comes to their own safety and rescue.
It’s okay to need a little help from a friend or a loved one, as US Marshal Jenna Sheriden certainly does, but it’s her duty to act and not merely react to situations just like the one she needs former Ghost Ops member Parker Conroy’s help WITH and not FOR.
One of Parker’s disgraced and dishonorably discharged former teammates has gone seriously rogue and it looks like he’s come to Alaska to get himself lost between murders. Alaska is a place where people really do go to lose themselves – but it’s a LOT more difficult to lose yourself when you pop out of hiding on a MUCH too regular basis to satisfy your need to rape and murder.
Still, Kyle Olson has the skills to continue his spree for entirely too long of a time. Jenna is excellent at what she does, but this bastard is seriously next level and she needs someone on that level to catch him. While Vander Norcross (his book is The Powerbroker), former head of Ghost Ops and still the badass ‘mother hen’ for all of them, knows that Parker Conroy is doing his damndest to lose himself in Alaska – albeit much more peacefully – and needs a way to expiate his own demons. Preferably on someone who really, really, deserves it.
Jenna needs Parker to help her catch Olson, Parker needs Jenna to bring him back from the wilderness. And Olson seriously needs to get caught. Or dead. Whichever. As long as he ends up somewhere he can’t manage to escape from. Again.
Escape Rating A-: Clearly, I went into The Hero She Loves expecting to enjoy it – and I absolutely did!
First, this does feel like the Alaska I knew through other people’s stories when I lived there. Anchorage is nothing like the Alaskan bush, and Valdez is tiny in comparison, a city of 4,000 compared to Anchorage’s not quite 300,000. (The local joke is that Anchorage is about 45 minutes from the “REAL” Alaska. Valdez is way closer than that.)
But still, it felt like the place I knew enough that nothing took me out of the story.
What made the story work for me is that Jenna was absolutely Parker’s equal, both for good and for bad. Not just that they’re equally badass and kickass in their own ways, but that they are each weighted down by emotional baggage trains filled with equally terrible demons. It’s not that they have the exact same demons, but that their demons are as big and bad as each other’s.
And neither of them believes that they can afford to look for love – let alone find it – no matter how much they both need it. And, of course, each other. Even if it does take a while for them to see it.
I found myself a bit torn, however, when it comes to the villains of this piece. There’s a little villain (and I mean that in any way that you might want to take it) in the person (using that term a bit loosely) of Jenna’s almost, sorta/kinda ex who just so happens to be her current boss in the Marshal service. He doesn’t even rise to the level of asshole. He’s just a little pisser. Repeatedly, often, and I’m surprised Jenna never gave in to at least dreaming about decking him. I want to say his actions and his character don’t ring true, but the problem is that they do – to the point where I’m left questioning her judgement a lot more than I’d like to. I wish he’d slunk away after he caused this entire debacle at the opening and I really wish he’d gotten exactly what he deserved at the end. But in real life, guys like him don’t. Dammit.
Howsomever, the real villain didn’t feel, well, real. While on the one hand that’s a head I’m really grateful not to have ever been in – I’d have hated reading anything from his perspective – at the same time he was so over the top he was mostly a caricature rather than a character.
On my third hand, the one behind my back, I’m not supposed to like him, he’s the villain. And I certainly did have a great time with Jenna and Parker visiting at least the vicinity of one my own old stomping grounds and watching them stomp all over someone who really deserved it even as they snuck into each other’s hearts.
The Hero She Loves marks the wrap of the author’s Unbroken Heroes series, barring any happy ever after all around epilogue – and I’d love to see one. I’m hoping that what comes next from this author is the first book in her NEW science fiction romance series, because those are always my favorites! We’ll certainly see in the months ahead.