in rides trouble julie ann walker

Black Knights Inc. series
Becky "Rebel" Reichert never actually goes looking for trouble. It just has a tendency to find her. Like the day Frank Knight showed up at her door, wanting to use her motorcycle shop as a cover for his elite special ops team. But Becky prides herself on being able to hang with the big boys-she can weld, drive, and shoot just as well as any of them.
Munitions, missiles, and mayhem are Frank's way of life. The last thing the ex-SEAL wants is for one brash blonde to come within fifty feet of anything that goes boom. Yet it's just his rotten luck when she ends up in a hostage situation at sea. Come hell or high water, he will get her back-whether she says she needs him or not.


In the moments of action, in the beginning and the end of the book, the suspense is gripping and intense. Especially in the end, I could feel the danger, see the evilness of the villain, be in the moment with the victim. Fantastic writing, very appealing.
Same was with the romance, when Frank and Becky finally, after years of holding back, acts on their attraction and feelings towards each other, it is hot, passionate  - steamy and sweet. 
But the push-pull from Frank, and in the end from Becky, gets tiresome. The reasons for that are implied, the age difference, Frank being Becky's boss, and the promise Frank made to his sister. But at the end, when the promise is revealed, it doesn't sound believable, something that a man like Frank wouldn't have cleared with his sister years before.
Becky comes off as a bit childish, constantly crying, and emotionally needy. The rants and shouting between her and her brother Billy are embarrassing, made me think 'no wonder Frank thinks he is too old for her'. She sounded more like six, not 26.
I was relieved that there was much less of the inner reflection from all the characters, compared to Hell on Wheels. Still the story was told, in my opinion, from too many points of view. The point, the intensity, gets scattered that way.
Over all, this story was a step up from Hell on Wheels. I enjoyed this one more, and the writing was better. So this series has promise of getting better. And withholding the sometimes childish and immature behavior, that I feel the characters are sold short with, they crow on you in a way that I want to keep reading the series. Because the parts that I liked in this story were really promising: 3,5*

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