LOVE INSPIRED SUSPENSE BOOK SERIES CRITIQUE - ROCKY MOUNTAIN K-9 UNIT (2022)

I keep hoping for an Arizona series, but this is getting close.

Note - this critique will give spoilers of the series.

The main story involves a car crash with one fatality, one person in a coma and with amnesia when she recovers, and one missing baby. Other stories include a serial killer striking at various state parks who targets blondes (such as K-9 officer Harlow Zane in book 6) and Sergeant Tyson Wilkes working to  convince his highers up to make the K-9 unit permanent, in spite of several sabotage attempts.

This series includes:

1. "Detection Detail" by Terri Reed.
2. "Ready to Protect" by Valerie Hansen.
3. "Hiding in Montana" by Laura Scott.
4. "Undercover Assignment" by Dana Mentink.
5. "Defending From Danger" by Jodie Bailey.
6. "Tracking a Killer" by Elizabeth Goddard.
7. "Explosive Revenge" by Maggie K. Black.
8. "Rescue Mission" by Lynette Eason.
9. "Christmas K-9 Unit Heroes" by Lenora Worth and Katy Lee.

Once again, I didn't read the Christmas novella duet.

In the previous series, the broad stories are resolved in books 7 and 8, but this one completes one of the stories in book 6. My favorites are "Undercover Assignment" and "Explosive Revenge." The former one is based in New Mexico (the territory for this K-9 Unit is from New Mexico to Montana); not quite Arizona, but close enough for me to feel homesick.

While I enjoyed the series, there was one story I had a hard time getting into, a first for the K-9 series, that being "Hiding in Montana." Also, there were two different stories in this series where the heroine enters the book struggling to keep her business afloat, with her main business antagonist is a suspect for the trouble-making, and exits the book selling her business to that main antagonist (who was not part of the troublemaking after all) to take another job and be close to the hero. I may be one of the few, but that made me feel sad in both cases. 

That said, this series is full of great suspense and romantic tension. 

 

SERIES ON LOVE INSPIRED SUSPENSE K-9 UNIT SERIES CRITIQUES

You probably have noticed that I read and review a lot of novels from Harlequin's Love Inspired Suspense imprint, and the majority of those belong to their annual multi-author K-9 series. After all, who can resist all those wonderful dogs?! So far I've read six series (or the majority of six series) and will be starting a seventh next week.  With that in mind, I thought I'd give an overview of the six series I've read.

Technically, this is my second review of a series. The first book review I did, in fact (posted September 22, 2020) was on this series. If you want to review it, click here. 

However, there is a difference between that and what I'll be doing here. This series is not of book reviews but critiques. What's the difference? In my reviews of the individual books, I go out of my way to avoid spoilers. (Anybody notice that?) My goal is to get those who would enjoy that book (or movie or album) interested in reading it and not ruining it in the process. Let me make this clear: THIS SERIES WILL HAVE SPOILERS! I'm looking at the development of each series, and thus cannot avoid spoiling parts of it. 

Typically, each series can be considered to have either eight or nine books. The story, which includes a major and usually two story threads that go through most or all of eight novels. But then, they have a ninth book featuring two novellas, which take place after the main stories have concluded. I have not read most of those final books. In the True Blue K-9 series, the main story involves the unsolved murder of the K-9 unit's chief and finding his K-9 Snapper. The other stories is the choosing of a new chief (which is one of the three brothers of the former chief, all of which are in the unit) and a restaurant that has a section for the K-9 officers and their partners called the doghouse, which closes down but is reopened at the end. One difference with this series is that it also has a prequel. 

The books in this series are: 

1. "Shield of Protection" by Dana Mentink.
2. "Justice Mission" by Lynette Eason.
3. "Act of Valor" by Dana Mentink.
4. "Blind Trust" by Laura Scott.
5. "Deep Undercover" by Lenora Worth.
6. "Seeking the Truth" by Terri Reed.
7. "Trail of Danger" by Valarie Hansen.
8. "Courage Under Fire" by Sharon Dunn.
9. "Sworn to Protect" by Shirlee McCoy.
10. "True Blue K-9 Unit Christmas" by Laura Scott and Maggie K. Black.

Note - I have not read the first two on the list nor the 9th one, due to the quickness of books going out of print and COVID. Less than 24 hours before writing this, I found the Christmas book, so I read this primarily to confirm my hunch that the restaurant reopened (it did).

My favorites were numbers 3 and 6. "Act of Valor" was the first K-9 unit book I read, and it got me hooked. It also included one of my all-time favorite villains - Javier Beck, a drug dealer who enjoyed being bad. But that one was topped by "Seeking the Truth." The heroine, reporter Rachelle Clark, basically had no family. She fell in love with widower Carter Jameson, one of the brothers of the murdered former chief. But Rachelle didn't just get the love of her life: she also got Carter's daughter and mother and rest of the family. After Carter proposed, his eavesdropping mother then told Rachelle it was time to go shopping.

Some of these older series may be hard to find, but if you can, they're worth it.

 

BOOK REVIEW - RESCUE MISSION (ROCKY MOUNTAIN K-9 UNIT BOOK 8) BY LYNETTE EASON

 

What missing memories does Katie have about the night when she was in an amnesia-causing accident and a baby had been kidnapped? Can Lucas Wilson and his K-9 Partner Angel keep her alive until she's able to help them find the infant?

Rescue Mission by Lynette Eason is the finale of the Rocky Mountain K-9 Unit series. (Okay, there's a pair of novellas following this, but this novel completes the unresolved story-lines the previous volumes established.) Katie Montgomery is introduced (comatose) in the first novel, and the following books follow Katie's coming to and the few clues they have to what happened.

If you like exciting romantic fiction, especially with a helpful and trained K-9 assistant, you'll definitely love this story. Since it's the last one in the series, I'd advice reading the other books first, but more so to be able to enjoy the stories that set up for this one than to not feel lost reading the last book first.