Going Dark by Monica McCarty: Review


Posted September 5, 2017 in review Tags: , ,

Going Dark by Monica McCarty: ReviewGoing Dark by Monica McCarty
Pages: 352
three-flames

Series: The Lost Platoon #1
Genres: Romantic Suspense
Source: ARC, NetGalley
Also in this series: Off the Grid
Also by this author: Off the Grid
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The members of a top secret SEAL Team can't keep their passion under wraps in this thrilling contemporary romantic suspense series from New York Times bestselling author Monica McCarty.

Like Rome's Lost Legion, a SEAL platoon goes on a mission and vanishes without a trace.

After walking into a trap on a covert op in Russia, the men from top secret SEAL Team Nine are presumed dead. Not knowing whom they can trust, and with war hanging in the balance, the survivors must go dark and scatter around the globe.

Marine ecologist Annie Henderson joins her new boyfriend on a trip to the Western Isles of Scotland to protest a hazardous offshore drilling venture. When she realizes that she may be swept up in something far more dangerous than she'd intended, there is only one man she can turn to. . . .

She and the mysterious but sexy dive boat captain haven't exactly gotten off to the best start, but something about his quiet confidence makes her think that he's the kind of man she can depend on. Because he's gruff and guarded, she can tell Dan Warren has secrets. But she could never imagine how high the stakes are for him to keep his cover, even as he risks everything to protect her. . . .

Monica McCarty isn’t a new author but she is a new-to-me author! Going Dark is her first foray into romantic suspense so I was thrilled to snag this and check out her writing!

The story starts by introducing us to SEAL team 9, who will become ‘the lost platoon’. McCarty dives right in to introducing us to the team, which was interesting to me, but I think might be a bit overwhelming for some readers. Its a lot of characters, and they all have nicknames, and then they all have their specialized SEAL jobs. So the first few pages are PACKED with info. However, I loved the humor that McCarty wove in. It wasn’t over the top funny, but subtle and seems believable when you have a group of men who spend way too much time together!

After the prologue intro to the team, you meet Annie, a marine ecologist who has traveled to Scotland with her boyfriend (who is kind of a French douche…not sure what she ever saw in him). Things go south quickly and the boat captain who has been working with the team all week comes to her rescue. Annie is one of those characters that I think some people will hate. She is so smart (she got a doctorate in ecology), but so narrow minded and occasionally a bit naive. She struck me as one of those people who spends all their time READING about things but never actual going out and experiencing things. I had no problem believing in insta-lust between these two. I wasn’t quite sold on how their relationship would last long term though.

Annie and Dean are opposites in so many ways. He is very conservative and she is so liberal. They have such divergent political views that it made things interesting for sure! The plot keeps you on your toes and is very engaging. There were parts I felt the book got a little slow and sometimes I was confused (Like, did we meet Dean in the prologue? I can’t remember. And is his name Dean or Dan? Because the synopsis says Dan but the book says Dean. Did I miss that this was a deliberate name change for secrecy? I’m so confused!).

Danger, ecoterrorism, and romance flash through the pages of Going Dark and introduce you to a world of espionage and back stabbing that you won’t be able to walk away from!

 

  • POV: 3rd
  • Tears: no
  • Trope: military, terrorism
  • Triggers: none
  • Series/Standalone: series (while it appears each book will center around a different couple, the overall story ARC continues)
  • Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
  • HEA: View Spoiler »
Breakdown
Hero
Heroine
Chemistry
Writing/Plot
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Overall:

Books about military teams like Call to Honor by Tawny Weber, The Legend by Donna Grant, Aim by LP Dover…then you will probably like Going Dark!

 

Going Dark

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About Monica McCarty

What do you get when you mix a legal career, a baseball career, motherhood, and a love of history with a voracious reader? In Monica McCarty's case, a Historical Romance Author.

Like most writers, I’ve always loved to read. Growing up in California there was always plenty to do outside, but all too often I could be found inside curled up with a book (or two or three). I started with the usual fare: The Little House on the Prairie series, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Watership Down, Nancy Drew, and everything by Judy Blume. Once I cleared off my bookshelf, I started swiping books from my mom. Some, like Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight, probably weren’t the most appropriate choice for a pre-adolescent—although they were definitely illuminating. I can still remember the look of abject horror on my mom’s Catholic-girl-face when I asked her what a virgin was. After that rather brief conversation, she paid a little closer attention to what had disappeared off her book shelf, and steered me in the direction of Harlequin and Barbara Cartland romances. I was hooked. I quickly read through the inventory of the local library and was soon buying bags of romances at garage sales.

In high school, with the encouragement of my father (who I think was a little concerned about the steady diet of romances), I read over eighty of the Franklin Library’s One Hundred Greatest Books ever written—including Tolstoy, Confucius, Plato, and the entire works of Shakespeare. Some of them were tough going for a teenager, but the experience would prove an invaluable foundation for college. After reading War and Peace, I wasn’t easily intimidated.

For some reason Monica decided to go into writing and not fashion.

After graduation, I loaded up the VW (Jetta not Bus) and trekked down I-5 to attend the University of Southern California, majoring in Political Science and minoring in English (see why all that reading helped!). I joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, and when I wasn’t studying or at football games, did my best to support the local bartending industry. Ah, the good old days.

With that kind of fun, four years of college wasn’t quite enough. So leaving Tommy Trojan behind, I traveled back up north to Palo Alto for three more years of study at Stanford Law School. Once I survived the stress of the first semester, law school proved to be one of the best times of my life—garnering me a JD, life-long friends, a husband, and an unexpectedly intimate knowledge of baseball. (See “The Baseball Odyssey” below).

Law School was also where I fell in love with Scotland. In my third year, I took a Comparative Legal History class, and wrote a paper on the Scottish Clan System and Feudalism. So I immediately dropped out of law school and went on to write Scottish Historical Romances…well no, not quite. You see, I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. My father was a lawyer, I was a “poet” (i.e., not into math), and I love to argue. It seemed natural.

So I finished law school, got married, passed the CA bar, moved to Minnesota (with a few stops along the way), waived into the MN bar, worked as a litigator for a few satisfying years, moved back to CA, had a couple of kids, realized that a legal career and being a single parent for most of the year (due to husband's career) would be extremely difficult, and THEN decided to sit down and write.

And how did I end up writing romance? It’s not as divergent as it seems. What I loved about being a lawyer are the same things I love about being a writer—research and writing. The only thing missing is the arguing, but that’s what a husband and kids are for, right?

Samantha
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3 responses to “Going Dark by Monica McCarty: Review

  1. I had mixed feelings about Annie at first, but I loved Dan/Dean. I agree about the boyfriend. What did she ever see in him?! I have read Monica McCarty’s books before–a Highlander trilogy and enjoyed it. I enjoyed this one as well, although, like you, I wonder at this couple’s staying together power.

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