COOPER (Corps Security #4) by Harper Sloan-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 19, 2014

Do you take me seriously? Because I don’t. I use my jokes and easygoing personality to hide the pain I’ve felt since he took his last breath. I’m adrift without my partner in crime, my best friend…my brother. I can taste the vengeance just within my grasp.

Until she barges into my life. Promising me happiness and a peace I’ve been craving for years. She is the sun to my darkness, the happy to my despair.

But she holds secrets. Just like I do. She holds hers close, where I just pray mine don’t rock the walls we’re trying to build.

Now I’m stuck at a crossroads between my desire for revenge and my craving for her and the life we could have together—and I have no idea which road I should travel.

All I know with crystal clear certainty is that the past has the power to destroy it all.

•••••••••••••••••••

WARNING: Review may contain spoilers if you have not read BECK

REVIEW: COOPER is the fourth full-length instalment in Harper Sloan’s adult, contemporary Corps Security erotic romance series focusing on a group of ex-marines and the women they love. This is Asher Cooper and Chelcie Avery’s storyline.

Told from alternating first person POV (Chelcie and Asher) the storyline follows Asher and Chelcie’s building relationship. Following Asher’s brother’s murder (Coop) at the hands of a notorious drug lord, Chelcie and Asher are brought together through their mutual love of Zakariah Cooper and connection to Corps Security. While Asher hunts for the people responsible for his brother’s death, Chelcie must find a way to get Asher to accept the secret she is frightened to reveal.

Throughout the storyline we are witness Asher’s spiral into heartbreak and loss following the death of his beloved younger brother. For weeks Asher has remained numb using alcohol and women to keep the pain away and in doing so pushes away the woman with whom he is falling in love. His destructive and abusive childhood haunts his nights while the death of his brother haunts his every waking moment. The only spot of ‘sunshine’ in his life is Chelcie Avery –the very woman he wants to call his own.

Chelcie hides a secret that is beginning to show. Her connection to Asher runs much deeper than love and she knows that she must reveal the truth. But revealing the truth may destroy everything she has tried desperately to save including Asher Cooper and the memory of his brother. Once revealed, our couple go forward with the knowledge that a little part of Coop will remain with them forever.

The secondary characters include all of the Corps Security warriors as well as their wives, girlfriends and children who bring a sense of family and familiarity to the storyline and series.

My only concern is the title referencing Cooper because throughout the series the reader has known Cooper to be Zachariah ‘Coop’ Cooper and with his death, we are introduced to Asher Cooper who is now referenced as Cooper in the title. There may be some initial confusion for readers but Harper Sloan will be writing ‘Coop’s’ storyline in the future

Harper Sloan writes another heartbreaking and emotional storyline of family, friendship and loss. The reader becomes part of the story as we watch Asher all but destroy any chances of love with the woman who calls to his heart and his soul.

Reading Order
Axel
Cage
Beck
Uncaged
Cooper

Reviewed by Sandy