crime-fiction, workaholic, working-partners, caucasian-ovcharka-guardian-dog, erotica, testosterone-fest, teamwork, embassy-staff, abduction, violence, violent-crimes, danger, intense, us-marshals, local-law-enforcement, cooperation, suspense, thriller, threats, m-m-romantic-suspense, contemporary, green-beret*****

Slow start ramped up fast! The pair are sent to the discomforts of Arizona and a chief whose management style is diametrically opposed to Kage's. Then the worst happens. Full of shootouts and chases, things become astonishing and a real social lesson for the unevolved.
The narration by Tristan James is amazingly perfect.
Loved it and plan to binge-read the rest in series! ( )

This book is a class act in the art of escalating stakes, if the string of cusswords I barked is any indication. Read All Kinds of Tied Down first, for maximum punch(es).

I should've seen a main turning point in this one, but the author got me with an 'oh of course!'. The bad guy is so, SO bad, holy crap. I bought the third book (Tied Up In Knots) before I finished this one. This one ends well, but I want more of Miro and Ian and their team and friends and the werewolf. :) Even the freakin' scary parts. I love the plot and the conversations are hilarious, and I love the underlying messages. To ignore the way the author uses characters and situations is possible, but you'd lose so much. Dig in, watch what she does, how she uses weakness and strength, skin colors, size differences, scars, fear and love. Watch how Miro's reactions drive the story, and why. Very creepy, that.
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This series manages to be in a light and fluffy tone on some subjects that are anything but. Very well executed, and bloody fun throughout. Also, seeing one trope after another taken out behind the paint shed is kinda neat. ( )

4.5 ( )

ETA: Scroll down to find an update to my original review and the reason I changed my star rating from a 3 to a 4

Original Review written about 16 months ago:

I liked this book, despite the fact that it is one hot mess. And by "hot mess," I am specifically referring to this:

I don't know Mary Calmes' educational background, but I think it's safe to say she missed the day her Lit professor lectured on the concept of Chekhov's Gun. To use the nice, simple definition from wikipedia,

Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that every memorable element in a fictional story must be necessary and irreplaceable, and any that are not should be removed. Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.— Anton Chekhov

Where this becomes apparent is, well, every single scene change found in this book. And every single new character introduced in this book. With any other writer I would read a scene introducing an unknown, mysterious character, and I'd think, “Ooooh, I bet he’s the bad guy. Watch out! Don't follow him!” I would yell at the main characters. But Calmes throws in so many random scenes and random characters that only ever mean anything to that particular scene, that it's hard to be bothered enough to wonder if maybe this is the one time she really is setting up the scene for later. Don't worry. She's not. I'd like to hope she was doing this to purposely mislead us to make things more exciting, but I would be wrong. They are just one scene following the other. Honestly, I think you could probably have an entire tv season of episodes from this one book.

And for the record, I could (might) copy/paste this review and use it for the first book in this series, [b:All Kinds of Tied Down|22402178|All Kinds of Tied Down (Marshals, #1)|Mary Calmes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401888434s/22402178.jpg|41827079], which also had scene after scene after scene of random, day-in-the-life kind of events. (This seems to be a Calmes Trademark as I also noticed it in [b:A Matter of Time, Vol. 1|8578291|A Matter of Time, Vol. 1 (A Matter of Time #1-2)|Mary Calmes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1279064017s/8578291.jpg|43980964] and [b:A Matter of Time, Vol. 2|8585948|A Matter of Time, Vol. 2 (A Matter of Time #3-4)|Mary Calmes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348437757s/8585948.jpg|43982162]. I didn't mind so much in those books but I think it's just because I liked the main characters in those better than the ones here with Miro and Ian.)

Updated review, about 16 months later:
I've been spending a ton of time in my kitchen lately which means I've been re-listening to a ton of my audiobooks. I'm thinking that if I was a.) willing to use Audible credits to get the audiobooks of not only this book, but its predecessor [b:All Kinds of Tied Down|22402178|All Kinds of Tied Down (Marshals, #1)|Mary Calmes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401888434s/22402178.jpg|41827079] and b.) give them a second listen during the course of baking and decorating five dozen cookies, then it's probably not fair to give this book 3 stars. In all fairness, if I've read a book and listened to its audiobook twice it probably deserves 4 stars, no matter how much of a hot mess I found it to be the first time around. And while Tristan James is no Michael Lesley (who has ruined me for all other narrators--god, I love his narration of [b:The Lightning-Struck Heart|24468673|The Lightning-Struck Heart (Tales From Verania, #1)|T.J. Klune|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434402683s/24468673.jpg|44061547]) he's not half bad ( )