Title: Deadly Strain
Series: Biological Response Team #1
Author: Julie Rowe
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Military Romance
Published: June 15, 2015
Publisher: Carina Press
My Rating: 4 stars
Source: NetGalley
Cover Description:
Major Grace Samuels, a trauma surgeon deployed to Afghanistan, spends her life helping her fellow soldiers overcome disease and combat injuries. But her own wounds are harder to heal. Wracked with guilt over the death of a fellow soldier, she finds comfort in her only friend and appointed bodyguard, weapons sergeant Jacob “Sharp” Foster.
Sharp feels more for Grace than a soldier should, more than he wants to admit. When the team discovers a new, quick-to-kill strain of Anthrax, he tries to focus on the mission to find its source. He knows he can help Grace defeat her demons, but first they must defeat the deadly outbreak.
Sharp is Grace’s most loyal ally, but in close quarters, he starts to feel like more. She can’t watch someone else she cares about die—but she might not have a choice. The closer they get to finding the source of the strain, the closer it gets to finding them.
Read on for my thoughts on Deadly Strain. No true spoilers, promise.
I admit to being new to the military romance scene. I don’t really know why, but now that I’ve started I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon. Deadly Strain was, in my opinion, an excellent novel to start my introduction to this genre.
Grace and Jacob’s story is fast paced, intense, suspenseful and shows that love happens anywhere, even in a war zone. The bond that soldiers have among them is beyond words. I honestly feel that those of us outside of the military will never truly comprehend it. Closer than family in many respects, what these brave souls go through together is unexplainable to anyone not within that group. All of that shows in Deadly Strain, the emotional, the physical and mental injuries and having to deal with and accept a fellow soldier’s death in the line of duty.
I could understand Grace’s reluctance to care about Sharp, and could also feel her falling for him in spite of her fears. Jacob’s feelings for Grace are solid, he knows that he could be her answer if she would only let him in.
The combination of suspenseful tension, the danger, and the growing relationship between Grace and Jacob worked for me. I’ve never been in the military, so I cannot speak personally – but it felt realistic.
I completely enjoyed Deadly Strain and found it to be engaging, entertaining – it drew me into the action and set me up to need to follow the rest of this series. I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys military romance (obviously) and those readers who simply enjoy an intense, suspenseful romance. If you’ve never read anything near to military romance, this one would be a good place to start, the bonus is that it’s the first novel in the Biological Response Team series so you know there are more like-minded stories in the future to look forward to. Pick this one up and enjoy.
*I received an e-ARC of Deadly Strain from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not change what I think of this novel.*
*Any review is just one person’s opinion. You might feel the same or totally different. The only way to know for certain is for you to read it. This was my opinion of this particular book.*
Deadly Strain is available for the Kindle