Wind River Protector

Andy Whitcomb loves nothing more than blue skies, but when her helicopter crashes in California, she’s ready to return home to the peace of Wind River Ranch. The good news is – that there’s a chance for her to fly helos for the county sheriff’s department. Bad news – the person in charge is none other the ex-Army Black Hawk pilot, Dev Mitchell. Dev can’t believe his eyes when Andy walks into the interview, but if he’s going to be her boss, their relationship has to remain strictly professional.

This story is an emotionally gripping and engaging slow burn romance with some intense life threatening situations. The characters are strong, vivid and easily draw readers into their story while the relationship is a slow burn building with lots of passionate intensity, readers are in no doubt that Andy and Dev belong together. This story is a clean romance that provides readers with the illusion of quite a bit of time passing and the characters growing closer together the longer they spend time together which gives them time to overcome their emotional issues to finally reach for their happily ever after.

The plot is set a steady pace and has lots of intense conversations as the couple get to know each other, both have past issues that have them hesitant to reach for forever after relationship, so the story has a lot of emotionally powerful moments and reflections. While some of the conversations seem to be a little repetitive, the overall spacing of the conversations and some thrilling suspense and excitement gives readers an overall ‘real life experience’ kind of story that can really enjoy.

Good book that started with heart-stopping intensity, moved to a fantastic, slow-burn romance, and finished with another bout of gripping intensity. The book opened four years earlier as Air Force pilot Andy is providing close air support for a Black Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan. The firefight is fierce and Andy watched as the helicopter ended up getting shot down just as she also took aircraft crippling fire. I was on the edge of my seat as Andy ejected into the middle of enemy territory. Fortunately for her, the Black Hawk pilot also survived and came looking for her. She and Dev teamed up and spent five days on the run before they were rescued. She never forgot the time she spent with him.

Fast forward four years. Andy left the Air Force and went to work for the LA Police Department as a pilot. A crash there left her shaken and longing to return home to Wind River. Word of a new air unit for the sheriff’s department makes the move even more appealing. What she doesn’t expect is to find that one of her bosses is Dev. Meanwhile, Dev is just as stunned to find Andy as one of the applicants for the pilots jobs. He thought of her often in the intervening years.

I loved the part describing their time in Afghanistan. Though he was surprised to find a woman pilot, Dev never looked down on Andy or treated her as less than capable. Having dealt with more than a few Neanderthal-like pilots, Andy was pleasantly surprised by Dev’s attitude. Neither expected to feel drawn to the other, but their circumstances prevented anything personal from being explored. When Dev returned to his unit immediately after their rescue, they never had a chance to really talk.

Dev and Andy’s surprise and pleasure at seeing each other again could not be denied. It was also clear that the connection they felt before was still there, but with the added obstacle of being boss and employee. I loved their decision to be friends, taking the time to get to know each other over a period of months. The connection that they forged during their five days in Afghanistan made it easier for them to share some of their deeper issues, such as Dev’s grief over the loss of his young wife years earlier, and Andy’s problems with trusting people after being abandoned as an infant by her mother. I enjoyed their mutual respect for each other’s abilities and strengths as they worked together. I especially liked the scene at the truck accident, as Dev worried about Andy on a personal level, but was also proud of what she accomplished. I laughed out loud at the truck driver and his amazement at how such a “Squirt” was able to move him.

One of the things I liked most about Dev was his sensitivity. He is truly a 21st-century man, willing to express his emotions, including tears. I also liked how well he was tuned in to Andy. The way he was able to help her through the adrenaline crash and emotional firestorm after their near encounter with the drug smugglers was fantastic. There was also a sweet scene early on in the book as he surprised Andy with the arrival of two interviewees for the other pilots’ positions. Dev fits in well with her family, too, I especially enjoyed his long talk with Gabe, and how much alike they seemed to me.

I loved Andy for her kick-ass abilities, but also ached for the vulnerability caused by her start in life. I really enjoyed the acknowledgement that women and men think differently, each bringing something different to a problem. I especially enjoyed how it was Andy who sensed approaching danger both in Afghanistan and in the mountains. I loved her close relationship with her family and the sisterhood with her fellow pilots.

The development of the relationship between Dev and Andy was fantastic. Because of the added complication of their work relationship, they had to make the extra effort to keep their working hours relationship professional, and save anything else for their off hours. I liked that they both felt that a solid friendship was a prerequisite to anything deeper. I loved the time they spent together doing things as simple as ranch work and hiking gave them the time to talk and really learn about each other. Not rushing into physical intimacy made the relationship feel much more realistic.

There was a nice bit of suspense included as the county’s issues with drug smugglers continue to plague them. There was a little foreshadowing as Andy’s first flight with Dev included visiting areas where drug drops were known to take place. Andy’s brother Gabe, an undercover DEA agent, makes an appearance in this book. His conversation with Dev adds to the building feeling that something is going to happen. I was on the edge of my seat at the end when Andy and Dev had their close encounter with the smugglers, wondering if they would make it out safely. The resolution was very satisfying and felt realistic in the way it happened.

Great central characters dealing with their PTSD and managing to find a place where they are safe and can heal, and maybe find the love they need. I loved this story!

I enjoyed this author back in the nineties when she wrote for Silhouette, although I haven’t read her in a while. This book started out great, with the two main characters working together to survive a tense military situation. When they meet again, (a bit too much of a coincidence for me), the relationship is slow to develop. In fact, the middle of the book is slow, with repetitive info about the heroine’s adoption issues continually hampering any forward motion. The drug problems plaguing the area could have provided more plot, but didn’t. I respect Ms McKenna’s work, but this was not my favorite.

It’s an easy to read relatively light book that gently touches on the subject of PTSD that sadly affects so many of our returning vets.

Enjoyable and fun to read about the Wind River!

I’ve read and reviewed most of Lindsay McKenna’s Wind River series, but Wind River Protector, the eighth novel in the series started out like gangbusters and fell totally flat for me for a number of reasons, which I’ll get to, and which is also why I can only give it a 2-star rating.

As the novel opens, Andy, the heroine, is flying an armored helicopter over Taliban territory and helping to deflect ground fire for a Black Hawk helicopter, dropping off black ops personnel into the area. Both helicopters are shot down, and Andy watches the Black Hawkcrash and burn before the same thing happens to her and her copter. She ejects herself from the doomed helicopter and manages to parachute to earth with nothing more than scraped knees, a few bruises, and, unfortunately, a broken GPS device that would signal her location for rescue–she has a couple of protein bars and no water. It doesn’t take long before the lone survivor of the Black Hawk crash, Dev, finds her, and they spend the next five days dodging the Taliban and getting to safety. Dev is almost immediately sent off on another mission, and her harrowing experience made Andy leave the military, eventually landing herself a job with the helicopter division of the Los Angeles Police Department, where once again, after about 3 years, her copter hits a drone and crashes down in an empty ball field. That’s it for Andy, she decides to return home to her family’s Wind River Ranch. Quite an exciting start.

When Andy returns home, the author spends an extraordinary amount of time explaining that Andy’s adoptive parents, whom we’ve met in the previous Wind River novels, were wonderful and supportive of all 4 of their adopted children. As luck would have it, they’ve been instrumental in helping to establish a full service airport in Wind River, and of course, there’s are openings for helicopter pilots. Andy is thrilled at the chance, and what a surprise–her new boss is none other than Dev, and both are thrilled to have found one another again, but Dev will be Andy’s boss if she’s hired, and what will happen between them? Sadly, things are about to change, and not for the better.

Andy is all for women’s equality, and is impressed that Dev sees and treats her as an equal. It’s hard to gauge her feelings because at first she mentions never wanting to have a man of her own or raise a family of her own, yet she’s certainly interested in Dev. While I generally like a slow-building romance, for some reason, the author felt it necessary to launch into endlessly preaching about women’s equality, in life and in the workplace, and while I agree with her position wholeheartedly, it went on seemingly forever, along with endless passages of repetitive dialogue reiterating how Dev and Andy met, and how they impressed one another with their survival skills, abilities and fortitude. By the time the airport is nearly ready of open we’re also subjected to more overdone angst about the feelings of abandonment experienced by Andy and her 3 other adopted siblings. Too much angst. too little story, virtually no forward momentum.

In addition there are also redundant passages about Dev’s feelings about his late wife, who died of a heart attack at age 20. Nine years later, Dev is still struggling to come to terms with his loss and wondering about his attraction to Andy. Yes, it’s a devastating occurrence to 20-year-old Dev, but he’s had nine years to comes to terms with it, and while it’s a tough blow, nine years to even show interest in another woman seemed too long and to hard to believe for this reader.

Yes, there’s eventually some action later in the novel, drug smuggler’s dropping their loads of contraband drugs into empty fields, and Andy and Dev getting into more scrapes and more danger, but by the HEA ending, I was totally bored by both of the main characters and totally annoyed at the endless preaching. I’ve been reading Ms. McKenna’s novels for decades, consider myself a fan of her work, and it hurts me to say this, but, in this reader’s opinion, this was the least interesting, most preachy, and biggest let-down of the lot.

I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

I have loved every book in this series! Can’t wait for next one!

This was a book that I didn’t want to end. This was a book from a series by Lindsay McKenna
and I read each and everyone of them. I would recommend highly.

Andy was an former Air Force pilot who had served in Afghanistan. Dev Mitchell was an Army Blackhawk pilot. Both of their aircraft crashed in Afghanistan five years earlier and they had spent five days together running from the Taliban before being rescued. As a result of that experience, Andy had left the military and worked as a civilian pilot. But, after another harrowing crash while working for the LAPD, she decided to move back home to Wind River, Wyoming. A new airport was being built in her hometown and she wanted to be a pilot for a team being assembled for rescue missions and would be headquartered at the new airport in Wind River.

When Andy arrived for the interview, she met none other than Dev Mitchell. All the feelings she felt for him as he helped to protect her five years ago came flooding back. She had lost touch with him after their rescue but had always wanted to find him but had been unable to track him down. What would it be like to have him back in her life? Would their feelings be the same? Did the bond they forged during their five day run-for-their-life still be there five years later?

I liked this story but it felt like it dragged a bit at times. I am not a fan of descriptive sex scenes and there is only one in this book. I could feel the emotions and the feelings they felt towards each other without the descriptive scene.

I was given an arc copy of this book and I willingly offer my honest review.