Judith’s review of Against the Edge (The Rains of Wind Canyon #8) by Kat Martin.
A child he’s never met. A danger he’s never known.
Deep in the humid, rank heart of the Louisiana bayou, a survivalist group has something that belongs to former navy SEAL Ben Slocum: his son.
That he’s a father is news Ben Slocum was not expecting. But once the initial shock wears off for the confirmed bachelor, he takes in the rest of what social worker Claire Chastain tells him: that Sam is in the custody of an abusive degenerate, that they’ve disappeared…and that Ben is now the child’s only hope.
As Ben and Claire band together to track the two down, their concern for the boy draws them closer, each fighting feelings there’s no time to explore. Because when their search takes them too close to Sam’s abductor and his cohorts, the danger hits home-the son he’s desperate to save, the woman he’s desperate to love… Ben’s got one chance to take back what’s his, and in one gunshot he could lose it all.
Those of us who have read the books in this series know that the heroes and heroines are gritty and plucky people who have taken the challenges of life, some of them quite extraordinary, and have woven them into the warp and woof of their lives. For a Navy SEAL, life is seen through a very specialized set of lenses. These individuals are prepared to deal with just about anything and no matter how challenging. Yet finding out that one has a child about whom they were completely ignorant has to be one of those moments for which no one is truly prepared. It would seem that Ben has met his emotional match and added on to that defining moment in his life is the knowledge that the son he never knew is in a situation that could mean either his death physically or the death of everything that little boy held dear. He’s been kidnapped in order to make him a gift to an older sister who has always wanted a child. And he is being inducted into a counter-culture anti-government cult that is mostly family and whose life is firmly rooted in the hidden places in the Louisiana Bayou.
This is a suspenseful, action-filled novel that pitches the extraordinary skills of a highly trained Navy SEAL against the wiles of people who have made a life out of staying hidden, whose lives are raw and built around satisfying the basic human urges, whose loyalties are all tied up in family and a determination to have everything their own way, no matter how many others outside their lives they hurt or destroy. The reader is given a clear sense of Ben’s awe at being a father, his horror at finding out what has happened to this little boy, the sexual tension that develops between him and Claire, the disregard of the sensibilities of a little boy as Sam is introduced to the raw realities of living with people who don’t really care about him, and the sort-of maternal urges of an older woman who can never really take the place of his dead mother. Readers will be introduced to a life that is so very foreign to the way most of us live, one that is absent of the finer nuances of loving and caring and respecting the value of other human beings. And this author doesn’t back away from giving readers the full jolt of what being a part of this cult means for a little boy who has grown up so far in a modern setting and is now taken back into a lifestyle that is about eating and sleeping and sex and all else that is fulfilling basic human urges without any of the stuff that makes for a life full of meaning.
I make no bones about the fact that I have really enjoyed the novels in this series and have found all the characters to be interesting in their own right. Once again Ms Martin has crafted a story that is unique in its own way, filled with people who are capable of keeping the reader glued to each succeeding page, and whose presence in the story enlarge the context in a meaningful way. No one is there that shouldn’t be there. And Ms Martin writes with an economy of words, making each word and sentence weighty with added feeling and information, moving the reader relentlessly through the story. That’s as good as it gets.
Readers who like a gritty story mixed in with a sizzling love story will love this book. Are all the characters to my liking. Heck no! But they all seem to belong and that’s what made this story really OK for me. I think it’s a novel that will probably draw me back again in the future just as has others in this series. And I happen to believe that any book that can withstand a second reading can’t be all bad.
I give it a rating of 4.25 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.This book is available from Harlequin MIRA. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.
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