Kaylea Cross

After single mom, Tala Baldwin loses her foot and part of her leg from stepping on an IED, she goes through a long-term healing process. With the help of her family and friends, Tala not only heals, but also becomes a triathlete. When her unrequited love interest, Sgt. Braxton Hillard, comes home, Tala vows to spend time with him, so she asks him to help her practice shooting. While out in the wilderness, the two become trapped by a blizzard and run across a dangerous fugitive.

Lethal Protector is too short to do much in the way of character development, but the plot is action packed and filled with dangerous events. The chemistry between the characters is more told than shown, but there is enough angst to build to a climax that finally brings them together. The real stand out part of this story is Tala dealing with her prosthetic leg and how she adjusts to life with a missing limb. Overall, Lethal Protector is a fairly average romantic suspense with a few shining moments.… (more)

I liked this pretty well. The military actions were well done. There was a lot of action and almost all of it made sense. The villian was well done and I liked the way he was humanized by showing his love for his horse juxtaposed against his killing of anyone who got in his way.

Things that I felt held it back just a bit:

The characterization of the two main characters seemed a bit underdone. It was nothing too major but I think with more explanation of where they were coming from might have rounded them out a bit. For example, the heroine, Bryn, was half Lebanese half American. The author never explained anymore than that. You don't know if her mother was Caucasian American or Lebanese American or what. Where did her parents meet and why did they split up? How long had she been going to visit her dad during the summer months? How vested was she in being Lebanese in addition to being American? How did her ethnic background shape her?

Same basically for Declan although he was very whitebread American we don't know much about his background I'm not even sure I know what color his hair was. If it was mentioned then it was only mentioned once not enough to set it in my mind.

Also, I never really bought into why she really needed to be on the second half of the mission. It wasn't totally unnecessay but I wasn't totally sold on it either. I also didn't like the way Ben called Declan, Irish. It wasn't bad enough to be a slur. They weren't close enough for nicknames that weren't derogatory.

It was an odd choice for the heroine to be saved at the last by the other man, Luke instead of the hero, Declan. This is a romance so it makes more sense emotionally for the hero to save the heroine. Then he could get injured if need be.

All in all it was well written and I will probably go on with the series.

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