Review: Run to Ground by Katie Ruggle

Run to Ground
(Rocky Mountain K9 Unit #1)
by Katie Ruggle
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: June 6, 2017
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Rating:

He lost his mentor.
He lost his K9 partner.
He almost lost his will to live.
But when a ruthless killer targets a woman on the run, Theo and his new K9 companion will do whatever it takes to survive—and save the woman neither can live without.

Grieving the death of his partner, Theo Bosco has no room in his life for distractions. Though his instincts scream that he should avoid Juliet ‘Jules’ Jackson, he can’t seem to stay away. It doesn’t help that Theo’s new K9 companion has fallen head over paws with Jules’s rambunctious family.

Or that when he’s with her, Theo finally knows peace.

When Jules rescued her siblings, whisking them away to the safety of the beautifully rugged Colorado Rockies, she never expected to catch the eye—or the heart—of a cop. Yet as Jules struggles to fight her growing attraction to the brooding K9 officer, another threat lurks much closer to home…

And this time, there’s no escape.

My thoughts…

Run to Ground is a great story filled with suspense, lovable characters, an adorable dog, and a surly hero.

Jules has moved to Monroe, CO with her four siblings. Four siblings that she actually kidnapped from their abusive step-mother. With the help from some shady characters, Jules is able to get her siblings, escape across the country, and set up shop in a little town in Colorado. She knows she needs to lay low, however, it’s becoming increasingly hard when one of the local officer’s who apparently frequents the diner where she works, takes an unsettling interest in her.

If I’m being honest on why I picked up the book, it’s because of the cover and because of Theo. It’s one thing to be a brooding bad-ass because you’ve seen some things. It’s a whole other thing when you lose your K9 partner not even a year ago, lose your human partner to suicide, and then get tasked to partner up with his K9 who is a broken-down shell of a dog. I mean, this poor guy doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break. Not to mention the poor pooch, Viggy, who is this quivering, pathetic mess of a dog. I mean, Theo tries to take him into the field and the dog is shaking, tail between his legs, hiding behind a couch in the middle of an operation. It was so heart breaking to watch and you could just feel the helplessness that Theo felt. Here he is trying to keep a hold on himself and yet he has this K9 that resembles a badly abused dog relying on him. So, yeah, I read this book because of Theo and Viggy.

Jules wasn’t a bad character either. I mean, she dropped everything to get her siblings out of an abusive home. She makes the best with their run down house, her waitressing job, and having to care for four kids. She was a strong character who has plan after back-up plan in place to ensure the kids remained safe even if they were found out. Her dedication to the kids was heart warming. The kids were also great secondary characters. You know that the youngest wasn’t abused in the normal sense, but she was kind of like her mother’s doll. She was always paraded around in pageants even though she didn’t want to be. The two twins seemed unharmed. However, the eldest definitely got the brunt of Mommy Dearest’s attention. You kind of get a feeling early on that something isn’t right with him. That something happened to him, even though all the kids seem to be happy go-lucky children. It isn’t until later that your suspicions are confirmed. Needless to say, I felt really bad for those kids and really didn’t want to see anything happen to them.

The whole time I was wondering when Jules’ cover was going to blown. Whether her step-mom found them, the police figured out who she really was, or the people who helped her decided to come sniffing around, I was always on the edge of my seat wondering when the other shoe was going to fall. It didn’t help that Theo’s new partner was heavily suspicious of Jules and that Jules kept seeing things in the woods behind the house. There was always that underlying fear that someone was watching them.

I’m so glad I decided to give this author a chance. It’s not all that often that I purchase a book by a new-to-me author… actually I think this is the first time I’ve ever done it, but thankfully it pulled off. Run to Ground was brilliant. It had everything I was looking for. Plus, it wrapped up in a way that I was not expecting. I thought the author would take the cookie cutter approach to the story line but instead she did her own thing, and I loved it! I won’t go into details because I don’t want to ruin anything but let’s just say that it was unlike any other on-the-run suspense romance I’ve read before.

Favorite quote…

“Oh course he had come for her, her cranky white knight with his battered but not broken K9 partner in tow ”