The Safe Bet by Brittney Sahin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

She’s there to plan the military ball – not to fall for the Marine in charge.

Michael Maddox thinks he has his life under control. No attachments, no relationships – he’s too busy transforming his knack for military intelligence into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. But when headstrong event planner Kate Adams comes barreling into his life, everything changes.

From the moment she arrives in Charlotte, Kate is tongue-tied by Michael. She’s never fallen for a client before, but then she’s never had a client like him – sleek, hard, and impenetrable as steel.

While Kate struggles to keep her distance, a stalker sends her tumbling more deeply into Michael’s world. The handsome Marine is equipped and willing to protect her, and yet, Kate finds herself more terrified than ever in his care. For as they grow closer, she realizes that Michael has his own secret past. And while he might save her life, he will surely break her heart.

A stand-alone romantic mystery with no cliffhanger and a happily-ever-after.

The Safe Bet

Military with plenty of romantic suspense!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💚💜❤️
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😟🙁☺️🤓
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Kate Adams – she is an event planner, whose most recent event was a wedding where the bride ran out. Though weddings weren’t her usual gig, and she was hoping her next meeting in Charlotte, NC would be successful. She is a consummate professional who works out of New York City but plans events all over. Michael Maddox makes her nervous, she doesn’t know how to act around him and always seems to get tongue tied around him. Luckily her meeting the following day is with Julia Maddox, not Michael.

The Hero: Michael Maddox – he was a marine injured in combat in Afghanistan in 2010, where he lost so many of his men. He lived when many had died, and he wasn’t sure how he could go on. His best friend Jake decided to get out of the military and go to Quantico to become a Fed. Michael decided to leave the military soon after and started up a private company based on his knowledge of the military and built it into a multi-million-dollar business.

The Story: Kate is in Charlotte to plan a gala event for one of Michael’s businesses, though his sister Julia wants the event to happen in a short amount of time and Michael hasn’t agreed to host the event yet. He started a small business to help military veterans and wants people to help with his charity because they want to do something good, not because they will be seen in the press. Though Julia knows that most people, especially rich people, never do anything unless they get something out of it.

The two main characters both have some deep-seated issues. It is immediately apparent that Kate has some problems with her father. She works for a firm started by her stepmother, and she is constantly ignoring her phone when her father calls. She visits her mothers grave, and it comes out that her mother died on the day she was born. Michael has some lingering PTSD from his time in the marines. Kate finds out that he has been different since he left the military than he was before he went in. He is also very anti-commitment.

The setup is rich with emotional tension and grounded character conflict—both personal and relational. You’ve got two guarded people carrying invisible wounds, thrown together under professional pretenses but with inevitable emotional entanglement. Kate’s carefully polished exterior hides guilt and unresolved grief, while Michael’s steel-trap control masks survivor’s guilt and a deep fear of vulnerability. There’s so much potential for healing and growth through their interactions.

What makes this particularly compelling is how neither of them is positioned as “broken” needing fixing. Instead, Brittney Sahin created room for mutual understanding: Michael might help Kate loosen her perfectionist armor, while she could quietly shift his perception of what commitment actually requires—not obligation, but trust. Add a stalker to the mix and we have a romantic suspense worth reading or listening to.

This audiobook was narrated from multiple perspectives, done in dual narration by Jason Clarke and Ava Lucas. These are two of my favorite narrators and you can always count on them to do an awesome job. Jason Clarke has a deep, gravelly voice that I just love. He does sexy so well. Ava Lucas has a soft, feminine professional sounding voice which is perfect for Kate.

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