Hold Your Breath by Katie Ruggle

This review is by Carolyn. 


In the remote Rocky Mountains, lives depend on the Search & Rescue brotherhood. But in a place this far off the map, trust is hard to come by and secrets can be murder…

As the captain of Field County’s ice rescue dive team, Callum Cook is driven to perfection. But when he meets new diver Louise “Lou” Sparks, all that hard-won order is obliterated in an instant. Lou is a hurricane. A walking disaster. And with her, he’s never felt more alive…even if keeping her safe may just kill him.

Lou’s new to the Rockies, intent on escaping her controlling ex, and she’s determined to make it on her own terms…no matter how tempting Callum may be. But when a routine training exercise unearths a body, Lou and Callum find themselves thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who will stop at nothing to silence Lou—and prove that not even her new Search and Rescue family can keep her safe forever.

I can remember the first time I read this book, a minor miracle in and of itself. The characters stuck in my head and came out to visit every now and then and you know a book has hit your sweet spot when that happens.

Usually I'm hero-centric but with this book I was both hero-centric and heroine-centric. I totally loved both characters and I loved the fact that there was no instalust, although there certainly was interest. We are in Lou's head, so we know she's interested but we experienced romance readers can also suss out Callum's wanting to do more to Lou than train her in cold water diving rescue.

Callum is a handsome, kind, gruff guy with a mild to moderate case of OCD and who never says a word if a grunt will do. There is no hint of an abusive background or any other reason for his personality, other than that it is just Callum. I found this very refreshing. And because of this, Lou loves to poke at Callum, about everything from storing meeting chairs to ... well... plumber's crack. Ahem ...

"You know, you'd make even plumber's crack look good."

His hand slapped over the back of the waistband of his jeans. Finding himself fully covered, he sent her an upside-down glare.

"I'm using my imagination," she told him, heading into the kitchen.

Lou has been known to babble and in fact does it several times in this book. She is also stubborn and courageous and determined to change herself from the weak, spineless person she was (her words), into a strong, independent woman who can take care of herself. Lou is the one with the past and it chases after her from the East coast to Colorado and oh my lord, this is such an exciting book and Lou is truly a wonder woman. As she says herself:

"Of course," she said. "In the hospital, I had a lot of time to think, and I realized that loving you doesn't make me weaker. To save you, I dove into a frozen reservoir, killed a guy and almost died."

He flinched, and she gave him an apologetic grimace.

"Loving you actually made me into kind of a badass."

Katie Ruggles became an autobuy author for me, based on this book. She is a good writer and her characterizations are deep enough to be interesting but not so deep as to be boring. Love everything she writes and I highly recommend this book, the start of the Search and Rescue series.