This is the second book in Ms. McCarty’s The Lost Platoon series and it’s amazing.

Lost SEAL Team 9 member John Donovan is hanging out in Finland, acting like a ski bum, earning money by working on the mountain. Really, beneath the ski bum exterior is a man who’s dying to get back in action. But he, and the other five surviving members of his team are staying under the radar. Someone set them up to die, so for all intents and purposes, they’re dead.

Brittany’s brother Brandon was one of the SEALs lost. She knows something more is going on than what the official reports are saying, especially since his team didn’t exist, at least not on the books. Brittany is a reporter with a chip on her shoulder about the government, so when she has a chance to expose something, even if it’s potentially dangerous, she goes for it. But her sources lead her to believe that not only are her instincts correct, her brother is probably dead, but that there may have been survivors. And a mysterious email leads her to John.

John and Brittany have a history between them, and she’s furious he can still get under her skin. He’s furious she’s not only putting herself in danger, but also potentially his surviving teammates. I’m sure you can imagine the sparks that these two are throwing.

But this is more than just a Romantic Suspense where the hero and heroine are on the run to stay safe and one step ahead of the bad guys. This is an intricate and intriguing story where the author delicately weaves strands throughout the book until something happens that you didn’t expect and you’re flipping pages as fast as you can to find out what will happen next.

For Brittany and John, there’s more in their way than his supposed death. She’s a reporter. She holds the truth as the most important thing in life. But where does she draw the line as a reporter? Publishing the truth is important because the people deserve to know what is going on, however publishing the truth could get someone killed. How can she reconcile that? And how will her article affect her budding relationship?

This is one of those books where you know the author did her research. SEAL Romance isn’t easy to write. They aren’t just a job. It’s amazing how much detail is given to the whole situation. The use of current events gives this book a realistic vibe, rather than dating it. It’s unique in that respect. There’s enough recap that you can read this book on its own, but at the same time you won’t feel as if the beginning is repetitive.

This author hooked me with her Highlanders once upon a time, and I’m pleased to say that I’m loving the new adventure she’s taking us on. Mixing real life issues and moments, combining them into the fictional SEAL Team 9, gives this series an edge. You’ll love it, trust me.

***ARC courtesy of Berkley

3.5 stars

Packed with danger, intrigue and suspense, Off the Grid, delivers a punch in the Lost Patrol series and leaves you wanting more. Investigative report Brittany Blake has been writing stories about the missing platoon in hopes to find her missing brother. Uncovering the truth is her only mission and it leads her to finding his best friend John Donovan living in Finland. John has been lying low for weeks now since the failed mission, waiting for answers himself on how the mission was compromised and half the team was killed. Now he’s trying to stay one step ahead of Brittany and her tenacious search for the truth, while keeping her out of harm’s way and his identity under wraps.

Off the Grid is the second story in the Lost Patrol series and had a different vibe from its predecessor. The story was following two couples and toggled between them as they paralleled each other in time and came together in the end. It was hard getting a read on either of these couples because individually all four of them were harboring their own secrets and was reluctant to the trust the other with their information. Granted that is all part of the suspense but frustrating as it carried on all the way to the end and left the minor character’s story line in a cliffhanger. The romance between the two main characters, Brittany and John, felt almost incidental when it concluded and a little cheesy at the end with the big proposal. I finished this story not learning anything more in the over-arching series story than I had at the beginning and wondered why there wasn’t any progress. Overall it was an okay story for the series but I didn’t come away with a satisfying feel and in love with the main couple. I’m not ready to give up on the series and hope that the next one fill in some more missing pieces along with a gripping storyline.

Monica McCarty’s ‘Lost Platoon’ series has an intriguing premise, which is why I can’t quite let go of this just yet. ‘Off the Grid’ even started off with that sense of urgency and adrenaline-high type of action which I adore in romantic suspense, and having these in the opening chapters seemed to bode well for the whole book. 2 very different couples grounded several unrelated developments as their own histories played out at the same time, the trajectories of their own discoveries dovetailing somewhat by the end.

This was until I realised that McCarty’s juggling of the conspiracy plot and 4 couples really spread the romance thinly to the point where the second-chance trope—rather glibly inserted—was worked out in a way that made out the male protagonists to be nothing but cruel, asinine arses and women who should have known better than to melt at the slightest finger wiggle.

‘Off the Grid’ ended up being a story that had so much potential which it ultimately didn’t fulfil. I felt as though I didn’t know more at the end of the book than I really did at the beginning, save for the basics that had already been laid down in the last book. My eagerness at wanting to uncover a significant chunk of the conspiracy plot turned into frustration when the storyline went nowhere: several threads were dangled as hooks, but there didn’t feel as though any significant progress was made, enough for the end to feel like a satisfying read, both on the action and on the romantic front.

Getting on board with Brittany and John was difficult when the latter merely treated her as the off-limits best-buddy’s sister, his obvious but reluctant attraction to her an unwanted thing as his motivation for getting close to her proved to be an order that he was following more than true attraction he wanted to follow up on. So much of their ‘relationship’ felt accidental as a result, when John made her out to be a burden more than a love interest, or a secondary character whom he didn’t want to want no matter the case. Wanting some other woman to screw to get his mind off things, for one, didn’t make him seem a credible romantic hero I could get behind, not to mention the other abominable ways in which he’d treated her throughout.

Much of their relationship was much more one-sided than I liked as John did nothing but push Brittany away on all fronts, while in contrast, the latter could never seem to resist this man who couldn’t give her what she wanted or needed—not even the basic respect that even strangers actually show each other. The rushed HEA (John only realising he ‘loved’ Brittany after she got captured) and the numerous instances of mansplaining away abhorrent behaviour that was subsequently too easily excused made me dislike a pairing which didn’t feel like they could successfully be together apart from burning up the sheets in bed.

There wasn’t much I could say about Kate/Colt either, whose business was given near-equal screen time, but with a lack of resolution that piled on the annoyance, despite them having formed a larger part of the narrative arc which was essentially left dangling by the end of the book.

If I started ‘Off the Grid’ on a high, I ended this on a whimper. I wished this could have worked better. I wished I didn’t struggle so hard to like the male protagonists, who gave me every reason to dislike them intensely. I wished they had more ballsy courage as the heroines did (the lack of grovelling didn’t help either). Too many wishes, too much frustration. And that was when I finally admitted defeat.