Steel by Sandra R. Neeley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since being given his freedom, Steel has spent every moment he’s not on mission with Lethal and his SOT team, taking care of everyone else in Alliance. It’s just who he is — steadfast, trustworthy, reliable. He’s seen some of his friends reconnect with family, and chose not to do the same. He’s even watched some begin to build new families, and others choose to walk away from Alliance and their own kind altogether. He’s understood all those choices, and never felt the need to make any changes in his own life. Until now.

Now he’s found his mate, Josie. And she’s everything. Everything that soothes him. Everything that excites him. Everything that fills him with a need to be a better male. But there’s a problem… General Ferriday has given his parents permission to visit Alliance despite Steel’s unwillingness to get to know them. As if that’s not enough to have to deal with, they’re bringing someone else with them. That someone else is Steel’s wife. A wife he has no memory of. A wife that has memories of him that can’t possibly be true. A wife that is determined to get him back into her arms and into her life. When added to a neurotic mother that he can’t believe is related to him at all, and a father that pleads for help that only he and his fellow Variant can give, it becomes an almost unbearable situation. One that forces Steel into a role he has no choice but to accept. If he doesn’t play this just right, make every step exactly where and when he should, lives could be lost. Lives that once meant a great deal to him, at least that’s what he’s told. And now just to make things more challenging, with the unexpected arrival of his mate, it seems he stands to lose her, too.

Could this situation possibly become any more complicated? This book is intended for mature audiences. This book contains violence and abuse both real and implied, and sexual situations that may be disturbing for some readers. If you are offended by these subjects, please do not buy this book. While some aspects of this series and the beginnings of the world it is set in are dark, this series is ultimately a tale of survival, revenge, healing, and love. This book — the story, characters, plot, places, circumstances, and everything it entails are all products of the author’s imagination. All are human-dreamed, human-imagined, and human-created.

Steel

Awesome world building and character development!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💚💜
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌎
Character development: 😔😅😂🤣🥰

The Hero: Steel – he is a Variant (genetically engineered human with animal DNA). He lives in Alliance, the community they created after they were rescued from the Colombian drug lords that they were sold to by the doctor that experimented on them and people in their own government. He doesn’t remember his past and he recently found his mate, Josie, who is the sister to his friend Scorn. However, he also just found out that he has family, including a wife from the life that he no longer remembers.

The heroine: Josie – she is sister to scorn, and like many of the other Variants, Scorn didn’t remember his past or his family. However, when they were threatened by a madman, Scorn wanted them protected and allowed them to come to Alliance to get to know him. Josie immediately fell for Steel, though she was afraid he had a girlfriend when he was helping Celia with her medical issues. She was happy to find out he was only friends with Celia, and he was sure Josie was the woman for him.

The Story: Once Josie finds out from Scorn that Steel was married, she went radio silent. She stopped answering his phone calls and text messages. After a mission one evening, Steel finds out that his wife and parents are at Alliance and waiting to see him. It turns out that his wife Carmella is the spitting image of Celia, the woman Steel helped with her medical issues and whom Steel had felt a connection with. Though Steel wants nothing to do with Carmella or his parents.

I must say, I really like Alliance and would love to live there. It is funded partly by General Ferriday who comes from a wealthy Texas oil family and owned the land, giving it all to the Alliance and the males and females that were experimented on and tortured, the government who are paying them reparations for all that they suffered and probably public donations as well.

They have built an awesome community with barracks, apartments, condo’s, duplexes and more. They just need to request a house, apartment or condo, and they are given the keys the same day. I would love a house, apartment or condo without having to pay rent, mortgage, insurance, association dues or any of that. They also have a big pool, a recreation center, a bar, a cafeteria where they can eat any time without having to cook or clean up. It all sounds like heaven to me.

Like in the previous books, this one wasn’t solely about the romance between the two main characters, in fact, a lot of it wasn’t about them at all. We got to learn more about Feral and what happened after he was finally released from jail, we also got to learn more about Vicious who was badly scarred after being whipped raw by that awful female doctor. His scars keep trying to heal themselves and just seem to add layer after layer of scarred skin which causes him unending pain. So, Dr. Waller’s son, Patrick is trying to come up with a way to help him.

We also got to see Ben (a.k.a. Two) and Shauna getting married. I love all the characters in this series, so I am glad to get updates on some of these supporting characters as well as the two main characters. There was a bit of a cliffhanger about Law and his mate Laurel, so it looks like there will be at least one more book in this series. I can’t wait!

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