THE LONG WAY HOME (Corps Security 7) by Harper Sloan-a review

THE LONG WAY HOME (Corps Security 7) by Harper Sloan-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date March 14, 2023

There’s a price to pay for a life with a greater purpose. The healing of time is a damn liar when you’re living a life as a dead man with no true home, and the silence couldn’t be more deafening. Counting the days, good and bad, I exist as the world keeps spinning. I can never look back. All I can do is hope I took enough out of that life to carry me forward on those dead legs. Everything that was meant to give the tragedy of my life meaning ended up holding me prisoner in this wreckage of my past.

Until now.

One look into her eyes and I’m completely disarmed. It’s only everything I thought I gave up. These walls I’ve built to protect and shroud me crumble more whenever she’s near. I’ve spent years waiting for a reason to breathe again, and now that I have her within reach, I’m not sure I can keep her. Is it possible to find both the missing piece of my soul and the remedy to my healing in one set of bright green eyes? Everything I thought I would never have is staring back at me saying … yes, I can.

••••••••

REVIEW:THE LONG WAY HOME is the seventh and final instalment in Harper Sloan’s contemporary, adult CORPS SECURITY erotic romantic suspense series focusing on a group of ex-Marines and the women they love. This is fifty-two-year old, Zachariah ‘Zeke’ Cooper aka Andrew ‘Drew’ Shaw, and café owner thirty year old café owner Olivia Kelley’s story line. THE LONG WAY HOME can be read as a stand alone but for back story and cohesion I recommend reading the series in order especially COOPER and LOCKE.

NOTE: If you have not read the previous story lines there may be spoilers in my review. The previous to last book in the series was released in 2014 but the author and her fans needed some closure for our story line hero.

Told from dual first person perspectives (Zeke and Olivia) THE LONG WAY HOME picks up more than twenty years after COOPER and LOCKE in which the Corps Security team have grieved the death of their friend and teammate Zachariah ‘Zeke’ Cooper who lost his life protecting the woman Maddox Locke loved but for all intents and purposes Zeke Cooper was dead, and a government ghost known as Andrew ‘Drew’ Shaw became the shadow that now follows our story line heroine. As a ghost, Andrew Shaw worked off books, dark ops for the government, taking down the baddest of the bad including all of the men who destroyed the lives of the people he loved. Along with his new teammates Evan, Hunt and Saint, the man now known as Drew keeps watch over our story line heroine in the wake of threats against her life and the life of her niece Riley. Olivia Kelley is raising her five year old niece after the murder of her sister by the man she once loved. Olivia is unaware of the threats against her life but her attraction to Drew is about to reveal more than she could have ever imagined. As Drew aka Zeke begins to fall for our story line heroine, his past comes ‘sparkling’ back, demanding the truth about what happened and why. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between Zeke and Olivia; the protection of Olivia and her niece Riley; the return from the dead for our story line hero; and the fall-out when the threats against Olivia and Riley come hard and fast.

Zeke Cooper ‘died’ the day he took a bullet for his friend’s girl Emmy but Zeke was reborn as Andrew Shaw, a man who now works undercover for the government doing the jobs no one else will do. Protecting Olivia and Riley has become paramount in Andrew Shaw’s life, and he finds himself falling for a woman who is about to relive the death of Zachariah ‘Zeke’ Cooper. Olivia Kelley lost everything the day her sister was murdered but found solace in the raising of her niece Riley. Olivia has spent most of her life alone but for the loss of her sister; meeting Andrew Shaw gave Olivia pause when her heart wanted something Drew may not be able to give.

The relationship between Olivia and Zeke aka Drew begins when Drew and his team frequent the café where Olivia works. Drew as Olivia knows him, is the silent and brooding ‘giant’ of a man, a giant that Olivia’s niece Riley comes to call her own. Zeke knows that to get involved with Olivia could threaten his career but when Zeke’s past comes calling, our hero needs Olivia to be his support and soul. The $ex scenes are intimate, erotic and passionate without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

There is a large ensemble cast of colorful, energetic and familiar secondary and supporting characters most of whom we have met in the original Corps Security series including Sway and Davey, Axel and Izzy, Greg and Melissa, Asher , Beck and Dee, Chelcie and Zach, Emmy and Locke. We are introduced to Zeke aka Drew’s new teammates: Evan, Saint and Hunt, as well as Olivia’s niece Riley, and co-worker Ella. I am hoping the author has plans for the next generation as I had mentioned in my review of LOCKE.

THE LONG WAY HOME is a story of family and relationships, secrets and lies, betrayal and acceptance, forgiveness and love. The premise is heart breaking and emotional; the romance is seductive and provocative; the characters are energetic, dynamic and desperate. I have missed these characters-the camaraderie, the friendships, the love and the lives.

Haven’t started the series? Books 1-6 are currently available in a boxset for only $9.99 at->  Amazon US only

Reading Order and purchase links-click on highlighted title
Axel
Cage
Beck
Uncaged
Cooper
Locke

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Reviewed by Sandy

About The Author beige

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Harper lives in small town Georgia just a short drive from her hometown of Peachtree City. She (and her 3 daughters) enjoy ruling the house they dubbed ‘Estrogen Ocean’, much to her husbands chagrin. Harper has a borderline unhealthy obsession with books; you can almost ALWAYS find her with her eReader attached. She enjoys bad reality TV and cheesy romantic flicks. Her favorite kind of hero–the super alpha kind!

Harper started using writing as a way to unwind when the house went to sleep at night; and with a house full of crazy it was the perfect way to just relax. It didn’t take long before a head full of very demanding alphas would stop at nothing to have their story told.

 

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The Long Way Home (The One #1) by Jasinda Wilder-a review

THE LONG WAY HOME (The One #1) by Jasinda Wilder-a review

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Chapters Indigo / Google Play / ibooks

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 30, 2017

I need you, Ava.

I am desperate. For you. For touch. For a kiss. For the scrape of your hand down my stomach. For the slide of your lips across my hipbone. The sweep of your thigh against mine in the dulcet, drowning darkness. For the warm huff of your breath on my skin and the wet suck of your mouth around me and the building pressure of need reaching release…I am mad with need.

Wild with it.

I cannot have you. I have lost you, as I have lost myself.

And so I go in search. Of myself, and thus the man who might return to you, and take you in his arms.

I loathe each of the thousands of miles between us, but I cannot wish them away, for I hope at the end of my journey I shall find you. Or rather, find myself, and thus…you. Myself, and thus us.

I am taking the long way home, Ava.

***

Christian,

I’m losing my mind, and I don’t know how to stop it. I shouldn’t be writing to you, but I am. I’m friendless, loveless, and lifeless. You’re out there somewhere, and still you’re all I really have. I hate my reliance and dependence on you, emotionally and otherwise, and that reliance is something I’m coming to recognize. I hate that I can’t hate you as much as I want to. I hate that I still love you so much.

I hate that there’s no clear solution to our conundrum. Even if we could forgive each other, what then?

I hate you, Christian. I really do.

But most of all, I don’t.

It’s complicated.

Complicatedly (still) yours,

Ava

THE LONG WAY HOME is the story of a married couple, Christian and Ava, both writers, as they cope with the loss of their son and the damage that loss causes to their marriage. This moving story, alternately heartbreaking and heartwarming, is the first in a brand-new contemporary romance series by bestselling author Jasinda Wilder.

•••••••••••

REVIEW: Like the story line itself, my review will be differ from the norm-my norm-or how I usually put my thoughts to words. Like most reviewers I follow an outline, rarely depart from a prescribed pattern but there are occasions when a reviewer, and in this case, an author, follows a path that is both familiar and yet, not. Such is the case with Jasinda Wilder’s THE LONG WAY HOME focusing on Ava and Christian St. Pierre, a married couple who barely survived a devastating loss- a death that destroyed their marriage but not their love.

THE LONG WAY HOME follows Christian as he embarks on a journey around the world to escape the desperation and heartbreaking grief that has consumed the woman he once loved. A voyage of discovery that will help Christian St. Pierre find the person he once was or the man that he should be. Told from first, second and third person points of view through introspective thoughts, email, journal entries, blogs, present day, past, and the memories of what was and what may never be, THE LONG WAY HOME is a story about death and loss; grief and heartache; and one couple’s struggle to survive the fall out of their marriage, their friendship, their relationship, their love.

Jasinda Wilder’s use of symbolism, amplification, imagery and metaphors sets the mood and tone for a story that reads more like poetry than prose. Ava and Christian’s stream of consciousness, represented through correspondence, emails and letters illustrate the pain and the depth of emotion of one couple’s spiral into the depths of grief, not only over their mutual loss and heartache, but the loss of affection, understanding, compassion and love. There is a fine line between love and hate, and it is this line that our couple traverses throughout the story. Together our couple is unable to move forward; separately, they will learn that loneliness is better than being alone.

THE LONG WAY HOME is an emotional story line; a tragic look at grief and loss; a profound, intense and dramatic tale. Poetic in its’ presentation THE LONG WAY HOME is a thought provoking and heartbreaking essay about one couple trying to find their way back home.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

The Long Way Home Teaser

About the Author pink

Jasinda Wilder

 

Jasinda Wilder is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and international bestselling author. She is a Michigan native and currently lives there with her family. Visit her official website at jasindawilder.com.

 

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