Into the Storm (and Before the Storm) (Evidence: Under Fire #0.5 & #1) by Rachel Grant (audiobook) – Narrated by Nicol Zanzarella & Greg Tremblay

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As a storm rolls in, a team of elite Navy SEALs arrives at a remote lodge for a wilderness training exercise that becomes terrifyingly real….

Xavier Rivera planned the exercise down to the smallest detail, but he didn’t plan the arrival of archaeologist Audrey Kendrick—a woman he shared a passionate night with before betraying her in the worst way.

As the storm is unleashed on the historic lodge it becomes clear the training has been compromised. Trapped by weather, isolated by the remote wilderness, and silenced as communication with the world has been severed, unarmed SEALs face an unexpected and deadly foe.

Audrey and Xavier must set aside their distrust and desire and work together to save a team under fire and survive in a battle against the wild.

Rating: Narration – A-; Content – B

Rachel Grant embarks upon a new series of romantic suspense novels with Into the Storm, book one in the Evidence: Under Fire series. The premise grabbed my attention immediately; a group of Navy SEALS arrives at a remote location for a top-secret training exercise only to find themselves fighting an invisible enemy, their communications severed and with a severe weather system closing in. As always, the author’s research and attention to detail are impeccable and she imparts a lot of fascinating detail by weaving it into the fabric of the story.

A couple of months before Into the Storm begins, its protagonists, Audrey Kendrick and Xavier Rivera, meet (in the novella, (Before the Storm) when Xavier, a Navy SEAL trainer visits the Olympic National Park to scope out the historic Lake Olympus Lodge and surrounding area as a possible location for a top secret training mission. The chemistry that sparks between the couple is hot and intense, leading to their spending a passionate night together. A few weeks later, Audrey discovers she’s pregnant – despite the fact they’d used contraception – and decides, straight away that she’s going to keep the baby and that even if Xavier doesn’t want to be a part of their child’s life, telling him is the right thing to do. She asks the mutual friend that introduced them to ask Xavier to get in touch – and is delighted when, later that day, she bumps into Xavier at the Lodge, pleased to be able to share her news in person. But she realises something is wrong immediately; not only is Xavier in uniform (he never told her what he did for a living), he’s cold and hostile, telling her he’s filed a complaint about her because she refused to sign off on the Navy’s proposal for a training mission because she was angry that he’d rejected her. Reeling at the unjust and unfounded accusations that could tank her job and her career, Audrey doesn’t tell him about the baby.

(Note: It’s not essential to have listened to Before the Storm, as the relevant information is contained within Into the Storm).

A few weeks later, with her job still on somewhat shaky ground, Audrey receives a call telling her that the security cameras she’d had installed at an archaeological site after it had been looted a couple of months earlier have stopped transmitting. Concerned for the integrity of the site, and for one of the tribal elders who lives nearby, Audrey makes the treacherous drive to the Lodge to check out the circuit breakers in the basement, and is annoyed when her key won’t turn in the lock. Before she can try again, she’s attacked from behind, handcuffed and patted down – and rolls to her back to find herself looking up into the eyes of Xavier Rivera.

Xavier still feels guilty about throwing Audrey under the bus in order to make sure that this exercise could go ahead, but duty – and the importance of this particular training op – come first and regrets are a luxury he can’t afford. Thrown by Audrey’s unexpected appearance, Xavier’s immediate thought is that she’s there to stop the exercise from going ahead as a way of getting back at him for what he did, but he does listen to her when she tells him about the cameras, and decides it’s worth checking out.

At the dig site, they discover that the camera lines have indeed been cut. With this unaccounted-for activity in the area, Xavier has no alternative but to delay the op while they find out what’s going on, but when he radios the team to give the order, he’s met with nothing but dead air. Yet the communications black-out isn’t due to start for another ten minutes. Things go from bad to worse when Audrey spots that a large pit has been dug in the middle of the site, which Xavier immediately recognises as a hiding place. Those looters weren’t looters at all; whoever they were, they’d buried a cache of weapons on the site, and now they’re out there in the woods and there’s no way to warn the incoming SEAL team – who aren’t carrying live ammunition as per the terms of their permit – that any hostiles they meet will be the real thing.

Audrey and Xavier’s animosity is very real – what Xavier did was despicable so she’s certainly entitled to her anger – but at least he’s adult enough to be able to set that animosity aside and take her concerns seriously and later, to apologise, as they work together to try to alert the team as to the danger they’re in, while at the same time keeping each other safe and out of the line of fire.

I loved the premise of this book, which hits the ground running right out of the gate, the tension stretched taut right from the start as Audrey and Xavier circle each other warily while beginning to realise that whatever is going on has been meticulously planned and that the lives of the entire team and those still living on park land are in danger. Audrey is a great heroine – intelligent, determined and resourceful – and Xavier, taking that one reprehensible action out of the equation for a moment, is a hero cut very much from the same cloth – and best of all, he’s certainly not one of those chest-thumping, ‘Me Tarzan’ types so often found in romantic suspense novels.

I’ve enjoyed many of Rachel Grant’s romantic suspense novels – her Flashpoint series is a real standout of the genre – but while the suspense plot of Into the Storm works pretty well, the romance is less successful. First of all, Audrey lets Xavier off the hook a bit too easily. I was pleased when he apologised sincerely and made it clear that he’s prepared to stand up, admit what he did and take the consequences in his professional life, but still – I’m not sure I’d have been that forgiving so quickly! Then there’s Audrey’s pregnancy. I’m not the biggest fan of babies/kids in romance novels anyway, so YMMV, but the pregnancy is mentioned way too often. I also found it hard to buy that Audrey – who, at thirty-eight, has landed her dream job (and actually ended her last relationship over it) and is presented very much as someone whose career is of paramount importance to her, would go so very ga-ga over her unborn child and decide immediately to become a (possibly lone) parent. There’s no internal discussion as to how she will juggle her job and parenthood and no consideration of other options, which felt very out of character. And finally, while I did like the way Audrey and Xavier’s relationship progressed – they’re very in sync in how they approach problems and they work well together – I was never quite convinced they were together because of how they felt about each other rather than because of the baby.

I had a bit of an issue with the pacing, too. Because of the way the story is told, Audrey and Xavier can’t know what is going on while they’re in hiding or on the run from the bad guys, so to fill in the gaps, we get a number of other points of view, including Flyte (the leader of the SEAL team) Park Ranger Jae-jin Son, the Big Bad and Undine (from Cold Evidence). While I understand the need for these other PoVs, they slow things down and, as someone who’s in it for the romance as much as the plot, take too much time away from Audrey and Xavier.

Finally, there were a couple of things that took me right out of the story, but they’re late on in the story so they’re spoilery:

1.As Audrey and Xavier are being rescued, she thinks:
They would have all the firepower they needed, and as ONP archaeologist, they had her full permission to let loose as needed, even if archaeological sites and historic lodges would be destroyed.

1. I get that she’s had a bad day, but her ENTIRE JOB is based around the protection of such sites, and one of the reasons she turned down the training mission was because the Navy hadn’t been specific enough about how they would ensure they weren’t damaged. So – huh?
2. Audrey banging on about the fact that condom expiry dates matter. I think we all know that ‘accidents’ happen – once would have been enough.

I was really pleased to see Nicol Zanzarella and Greg Tremblay teaming up again for Into the Storm. They’re both extremely good voice actors and their performance is polished and confident, with a good range of vocal characterisations and clear character differentiation. Their engagement with the material really helps to convey the growing emotional connection between Audrey and Xavier, and they’re as good in the in the high-stakes action scenes as they are in quieter, more intimate moments. Ms. Zanzarella reads the chapters and sections from Audrey and Undine’s perspectives, while Mr. Tremblay reads those from Xavier’s and the other male narrators; the nature of the story means there are more male characters than female ones, and while Ms. Zanzarella’s male voices are good, she’s not always able to differentiate clearly between more than a couple of them in any one scene, so that sometimes, it’s not always clear who is speaking. That’s really the only criticism I can level at the performance as a whole, and it doesn’t happen frequently.

Although Into the Storm isn’t going on my list of ‘favourite Rachel Grant books’, I enjoyed it despite my reservations, and I’ll be back for book two, Trust Me, when it comes out next year.

This review originally appeared at AudioGals.