Domestic Animals

If you've gotten this far along in this series it's safe to assume that you know this isn't romance. Not solely. Not in the genre sense and yet ...

Continuing with the theme of this final arc in the H&S series we get the mind numbing banalities of family life, the sand in your shoe, the sheet that's just a bit short, the balancing of the grocery budget, the thousand little cuts of day to day life. Parallel to that is the warm blanket, the hot cup of cocoa, the feathered nest to land on.

This outing is Somers centric. He's dealing with Emery (which as much as I love him is a full time job), becoming a dad to a teenage boy (don't get me started), his mom & dad (the less said the better), and being the boss to friends & former colleagues. He's not coping well, who would?

I won't lie. The first two thirds had me thinking that maybe the spell was broken. That perhaps Greg had gone too far with the ‘kitchen sink' drama. Hazard and Somers go at each other in ways that only people who know each other intimately can, those who know each other's soft white underbellies. It's brutal. Somers is having difficulty recalibrating his role at work and as an added wrinkle Colt has inexplicably decided that he hates Somers, who thrives on being the guy everyone likes. It's a lot. The salt on the wounds is a case that hits Hazard & Somers in their back yard, literally and figuratively. But I'm relieved to say that it was all worth it. My faith in Greg as an author continues unabated. The cumulative narratives led to Somers going through a dark night of the soul but he also gets loving arms to pull him through. True love ❤️