In the Air Tonight: A Shadow Force Novel Book

Review posted: Happily Ever After - Reads

Sex with Mace was both peaceful and rowdy. Off the charts hot.

Paige may have had the single most horrible childhood of any character I've read in a long time. Her mentally unstable, although seemingly normal on the outside, brother made her young life a living hell. He played mind games, tortured the neighborhood, killed pets and finally after trying to rape Paige, took a gun into their school and went on a killing spree. A selective killing spree, taking only the lives of Paige's friends. Paige, having the ability to use her hands to touch others and feel all their emotions, even in some cases their intentions, their past, everything, knew that her brother was close to snapping and her warnings to their parents fell on deaf ears. After the shooting, her brother Jeffrey was sent to prison, but Paige's life was never the same having to live with the guilt, the guilt she put on herself and the guilt the public put on her. Her life would never be the same again.

Mace is going through his own personal hell, still recovering from a mission where a teammate and friend, Gray, was killed and another friend, Caleb, was so drugged he has memory loss, and may have been too drugged to realize that he killed his own teammate. He's returned to his family's bar which he runs on his own during his downtime to help Caleb heal and try to make sense of the memories as they slowly come back. Mace's own childhood was tragic as well, but those feelings he keeps bottled up tight and doesn't let them out for anyone, until Paige comes into the picture.

With no information on her step-brother Gray's death, she heads to the one person Gray trusted completely and shows up on Mace's doorstep during a snowstorm. Trouble follows Paige even though she's tried to live her life in the shadows and soon Paige, Mace and his teammates are trying to figure out who's killing people around Paige and what exactly her locked up brother has to do with it.

As always, Stephanie Tyler gives us another tension filled story, this one with a little different feel that her other suspense books. The action was there, but it was more the guys trying to figure out who's doing what as opposed to them heading out on missions or plotting their own attack. The attackers were coming to their home and they were staying there to defend it and protect the women.

The relationship between Mace and Paige had a nice slow build up. They had met years earlier, and Paige got a "reading" off Mace after picking up his knife and knew that while he has a dangerous edge to him, he's just so much more. He scared her at first, but she knew if Gray trusted him, then she needed to as well. The interesting piece of their relationship was her not touching him, not reading anything off him until they were both ready for that landslide of emotions. I looked so forward to that scene when she finally touched him and they were fully open to each other. It was very well written and very emotional, everything you'd want that build up to be.

She dropped her hand from his neck and reached down to give his a quick squeeze before going back to work.

A small gesture for some couples. For them, it meant everything.

Oh, Caleb, how I love you. It's no secret that my love of side characters often competes side by side with my love of the leads, but Stephanie writes such strong supporting characters and in this case the conclusion to Caleb and Vivi's story, they didn't need to be compared to anyone, their own story stood on its own. My heart broke for Caleb, not being able to remember anything about his time in captivity on the mission that went horrible wrong. Memories are coming back slowly and even when Vivi shows back up in his life, the memories didn't return with her. To watch them struggle through the awkwardness of their reunion to where they end up, it's a tough road, but well worth it.

"Then tell me."

"I'm remembering…but I still feel like I'm going to break apart."

She moved to him, pulled his sweatshirt up and off, stroked her hands down his bare back. And then she let her hands roam along his chest and down to the button on his jeans before she murmured, "Go ahead, break apart. I'll put you back together."

Without going into any spoilers, there were a couple parts at the end that had me thinking, hmmm, both revolving around her brother. But he was completely creepy and I would ultimately put nothing past him. And as always with Stephanie's connected series, I'm left feeling all warm and fuzzy about Mace/Paige and Caleb/Vivi but I'm left wanting more for Kell and Reid. This was a great addition to her Shadow Force series.