Hold Your Breath (Search & Rescue #1)
Katie Ruggle
Sourcebooks Casablanca
2016, 365p
Read via my local library/Hoopla App
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: 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 saw the third book in this series recommended somewhere and I was going to read just that but then it was also noted that there was an overarching storyline throughout the entire series and it was best to read them in order. They were all available on one of the apps my library uses for eBooks so I decided why not and picked up this first book.
Lou is new to Colorado, working as a dive team search and rescue member. She’s lived a very different life prior to now and she’s living off grid in a small cabin, working days in a coffee shop and learning to do the search and rescue job. Her team is all men, led by the very organised, very particular Callum, whom Lou often feels doesn’t approve of her. During a practice rescue, the man playing the victim struggles too much and Lou accidentally kicks something whilst attempting to recover him. That ‘something’ turns out to be a dead body – a headless dead body, floating up to the surface way before it was probably supposed to, given it’s winter and the lake is mostly frozen.
Lou feels responsible for dead body man and she wants to investigate his death. She’s also having some weird things happen to her – slashed tyres, small other weird things that make a few people concerned. Callum takes it as his duty to protect her which definitely exposes the two of them to chemistry. He’s also ‘helping’ her with her investigation and Lou is a little bit of chaos in Callum’s very organised world. She seems to enjoy pushing his buttons and she also gives him extra things to do to make himself useful, especially when it seems like the danger surrounding Lou is definitely picking up.
I enjoyed this. I loved the search and rescue stuff, Lou and Callum’s jobs are so interesting. I don’t live in a place that snows. It does snow in parts of Australia but mostly on mountains and in more remote areas, so although I’m sure we have organisations like this in certain parts, I’ve never experienced any of them. I found Lou’s background really interesting as well, she’s left a very particular life behind to the chagrin of everyone there, for reasons that definitely get revealed late in the book. She’s basically on her own in this very challenging location. It’s cold, there’s a lot of snow, her cabin is very remote…..kind of a disaster when you have this potential stalker issue. It is off grid, so relies on a generator for certain things, which definitely makes you vulnerable. I love a forced proximity trope, so when Callum insists on staying with Lou to protect her, it’s very much a small cabin, but there’s only one bed type of thing!
The overarching mystery, which is only in its early stages here, is also definitely interesting with possible links to some intriguing connections in future books. This book also introduces us to the hero of book 2 as well as the general situation and how the overarching story might continue. The only thing that did annoy me about this is that the book said it was say, 350 pages, except it ended at literally something like 270 (for example, I can’t remember the exact numbers) and the next almost 80 pages was just an excerpt from book 2. And excerpts are fine but this was like….probably almost a third of the book? Which was a bit weird and definitely made the ending feel very abrupt because it felt like I still had almost 100 pages to go and it just ended…. Not relevant to the storyline really other than I was expecting more from this because of that.
All in all though, this was good. Very fun, looking forward to future books.
7/10
Book #118 of 2024
All The Books I Can Read 
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