Sunday, June 29, 2025

ARC Review: Kane (Ghost Ops #4)

Kane (Ghost Ops #4)

Lynn Raye Harris

Blurb:

Dead to their pasts. Ghosts. No family ties. No connections.

Six men with a top-secret mission move to a small town where they have to navigate local life, protect their secret, and, above all, stay single.

Notorious charmer Kane “Demon” Fox learned the hard way that love is a liability. Since losing his wife, he's built walls no one can breach—keeping his focus on the mission and his team. Feelings are a risk he can't afford to take ever again.

Until a stranded beauty with haunted eyes makes him question everything.

Daphne Bryant thought Sutton's Creek was far enough to outrun her past. With forged papers and a fabricated history, she's desperate for a fresh start in a small town where people are decent and life is uncomplicated. She’s joined a book club, found friends, and landed a job working for six gorgeous men who run the local gun range.

She’s safe and thriving—until someone breaks into her apartment and leaves a calling card she recognizes all too well.

Trusting the wrong person could be fatal, but Daphne’s running out of time—and Kane is a friend, even if she wants him to be more. As danger circles closer, the attraction between them becomes impossible to deny. Vows break, hearts and bodies tangle, and secrets implode.

If Kane’s going to save the woman he desperately doesn’t want to love, he’ll have to realize that the past doesn’t control the future. Because some ghosts aren't meant to stay buried. And some hearts are worth fighting for.

Themes:  Contemporary

Rating: 4.5 stars

Heat Rating: 

Review:

Ok so I did NOT see that one coming… and I loved it! So let’s be honest we all knew that Kane and Daphne’s story was going to be explosive, because the passion between these two was just undeniable in every previous interaction, but I could not have imagined just where Ms. Harris was going to take this story or the paces she was going to be putting these lovers through before she finally let them have their fun. For any long-time fans of this series and its connected HOT series, I think you can agree with me that Ms. Harris always finds a new and interesting way to blow our minds when she sends us a new story, but sometimes even I am amazed with where she comes up with this stuff. We have all wondered about Daphne’s true past and what led her to the small town of Sutton’s Creek and the dire circumstances the Ghost Ops guys found her in, but the truth is truly stranger than fiction. When her past rears its ugly head, Daphne is in danger and while she knows she should run for safety, Kane and the guys might truly be the only ones that can protect her and keep her alive. I am dying for the next story in this series, because of course Lynn gave us just enough of a hint to blow our minds and now Ethan will have his chance to blow our minds and we have to wonder if he has met his match in a quiet and secretive librarian named Paisley that has arrived in their little town with a young daughter and a past inexplicably linked to Ethan’s in some way.  The wild adventure of the Ghost Ops team is only beginning I think and with two books still to go I predict we are in for a crazy ride.

Kane “Demon” Fox has a reputation as a womanizer of the first order, but his past and mad him leery of relationship and love, he refuses to allow himself to open his heart again. But the sweet receptionist for their gun range certainly pulls all the heartstrings he forgot he had, and the more he is around her the harder it is to deny that he wants her, despite the roadblocks he erects. Daphne Bryant is on the run from a past that not only shames her, it puts her life in danger ever moment she lives. She gave up her past in order to escape the truth of families dark business and when she landed in Sutton’s Creek she never meant to stay as long as she did, much less to make the connections she has. Now she has not only friends she loves, she has lost her heart to a man that doesn’t want it or her, but her past has come back to haunt her in a big way and she has to protect her new friends. When Kane learns she is in danger he immediately tried to protect her, despite her wanting to run, but she fears her past will be too much for him and will take away any chance she has to convince him to open his heart. Now Kane and the guys have to keep her alive because she holds the key to their latest investigation, but she also has to convince Kane and herself that their relationship is real and worth giving a chance so they might have a future—if they can survive the killers out to end her life.

I loved the intensity of both of these characters, each of them dealing with their own fears and baggage from their pasts that shaped their ability to love and connection with one another. Kane’s past is dark and painful, his marriage having ended in tragedy and treachery has left him unable and unwilling to open himself to the possibility of love, even when he feels deeply for Daphne. His protectiveness, intensity, passion, and determination all mixed together to confuse him more than once, pushing him to say and do hurtful things until he finally pulled his head out of his ass and admit how much he cared for Daphne. It was obvious to everyone else how different he was with Daphne, especially when she was in danger, but he continuously tried to keep her at arm’s length to protect his heart until she finally forced him to get over himself. Only once she finally came clean, offering up her past, her vulnerabilities, and her fears did he finally accept that she was the only woman he could ever love again and truly open his heart making him the hero we always knew he could be. Daphne was a fabulous character, brave, smart, sweet, and bold (as any good Irish redhead should be). She might have had a sketchy past, but she knew when she hit her own moral line that she needed to get the hell away from her family and build a new future for herself. Landing in Sutton’s Creek, with the One Shot guys, she knows she is safe and finally lets herself start to believe in a chance at life again. Her brash and take-charge ability to show the guys that she can run with the big dogs was powerful and I loved watching her show them that they underestimate her at their own risk more than once. It is easy to see that she plays for keeps, especially when it comes to her fight for her future and Kane’s heart, and once she is in the fight she won’t give up until she wins. Even when she is terrified she never loses her head and always stand up for the innocent, making it clear that no one is going to bring her low without a serious fight on their hands.

Kane is a story of two people that have lived through fire and find their way to one another, even as they fight their need for each other and try to deny their feelings. Kane’s past has led him to keep his heart encased in steel, refusing to allow another woman too close and get his heart broken. But Daphne has pulled at him from the very beginning, despite all the walls he’s tried to throw between them and when she is in trouble he will pull out all the stops to keep her safe, even if it means he loses his heart to the sassy redhead. Daphne never imagined she’d find her best friend, much less the love of her life while on the run from her past, having landed in a small town in rural Alabama. She is determined to protect that love, especially from the psychopathic monsters in her past when they come after her, but Kane is just as determined to protect her, so maybe the answer is that they need one another to survive. I loved the way both Kane and Daphne had push and pull moments with one another, the intensity of their chemistry moving between fighting and *ahem* loving equally as they came to terms with their needs. That fire they found for each other is once in a lifetime and once they accepted that, it made it so much easier for them to give into their hearts’ desires. I am dying for Ethan because that story is bound to be even more crazy as he and Paisley (re)connect and we hopefully get to see more of Ghost and Diana before their book as well. I truly don’t know how she does it, but once again Lynn Raye Harris has dazzled me and I am thrilled I got to read this story.

*eARC provided by author for the purpose of an honest and unbiased review. No compensation was provided.

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