Full Battle Rattle by Giulia Lagomarsino
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I REQUIRE INTENSE SUPERVISION.
Full Battle Rattle
That’s what they say about me. In fact, it became my nickname—IRIS.
Yes, I like to blow stuff up.
Yes, it’s more exciting than dismantling a bomb.
Is it my fault I have a thirst for exhilarating work?
So, I went on this job that was less than thrilling.
My team was supposed to solve a series of murders, but that’s not really my thing.
And the worst part was keeping an eye on this woman.
Jane Layne. Shayla Jacque. Detective Jane Blackthorne… Blackwood?
Who has that many names?
As a mystery writer with a flare for the dramatic, she’s determined to solve the murder cases based on her very own books.
She’s smart as a whip and entertaining to be around. But there’s one thing I can’t stand.
Her fascination with her neighbor.
Alexander Pierce.
He’s a smarmy lawyer who has her wrapped around his little finger.
And I bet that’s larger than what he boasts down below.
Between the backhanded compliments and those pretentious suits, I’m not sure what she sees in him.
And don’t get me started on her informant. Tall, suave…a version of me, if I’m being honest.
All these men falling at her feet, and where do I fit into the equation?
Why am I not in her books? Granted, she just met me, but that’s beside the point.
If I want to be the main character in her life, I have to stop playing the supporting friend.
I just hope she doesn’t blow us up first.
“I Require Intense Supervision!”
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💚💜
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌎
Character development: 😔😅😂🤣
The Hero: Marcus Slater (a.k.a. IRIS – I Require Intense Supervision) – he works for OPS (Owens Protective Services). He is former military, and his specialty is explosives. He can dismantle just about any bomb or explosive ordinance, but what he really loves is to make bombs and blow things up with them. It’s what he lives for and is always on the lookout for times when he can put his skills to use. Sometimes to the detriment of the company, like when he blew up their former headquarters, though he did take out a slew of bad guys in the process.
The heroine: Jane Layne (a.k.a. Shayla Jacque) – she is a Luddite and a mystery writer who has written over twenty books, the last of which was her best to date. She was now having trouble coming up with new storylines, not wanting to be predictable. She has a big crush on Alexander Pierce, the attorney that lives next door. She sees him as a romantic hero who she would write about if she wrote romance novels.
The Story: when 6 murders occur in a relatively small city in South Carolina, a local officer trying to tie the murders together discovers that each murder closely follows the murders in Shayla Jacques first six books from her mystery series. OPS ends up getting hired by Jane’s publishing company to find out who is murdering people and also to protect the author in case the murderer turns his sights on her.
I love the running funnies in this series. I wouldn’t call them jokes, because they are mostly just funny situations or things that make me laugh. Like the fact that New Guy can’t die, Fox’s love of torture and Funyuns, or the way the guy’s think that all women get turned on by auto mechanics and the OPS guys don’t get how they can live up to that. There are quite a few things like that, even though they don’t sound like they would be funny, when this team goes on and on about these things, they end up being hilarious.
“We can’t trust a man who would keep secrets from us. Even if they are about the boss. If he’ll keep those secrets, what if he chooses to keep really important ones?”
“Yeah, like if we’re all about to die, but he doesn’t tell us, because he’ll live anyway.”
“Exactly.”
“Slider?”
“I say throw him in the river and watch him drown.”
“Except he won’t drown, because he can’t die,” I pointed out.
“Maybe we could hold him under until he stops breathing. Nobody would know. We could say he got caught on a log and the undercurrent trapped him beneath it. And then everyone would hold this massive funeral for him, just to laugh at the fact that he could indeed die.”
Overall, I didn’t like this book quite as much as some of the others. It didn’t have me laughing out loud like some of the previous books, though there were still some very funny parts. There was also quite a lot of action and a good mystery to solve, so I was kept interested throughout the entire book.
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