As I’ve said so many times now, the Ty Grady-Zane Garrett series by Abigail Roux is one of my favorite things this year! Is it the best series I’ve ever read? No, probably not, but it succeeds at sucking me into their world so wholly that I can’t help but put this near the top of my list. Stars & Stripes is no different.
After everything that these two have faced together, you’d think Roux would run out of stories to keep them occupied. Wrong. This time around, when I think we’re getting more story with Ty’s family, instead, we are pretty quickly whisked away to Texas to meet Zane’s family. While it is fairly obvious why he’s stayed away, it does seem like there’s an awful lot of him to go back for. He drops everything at the blink of an eye when he hears his dad’s been shot on their family ranch. Though he’s fine when Zane arrives, the whole situation raises the hairs on the back of Zane’s neck.
For as quickly and as much as Zane misses Ty, he’s quick to show up on his doorstep. He’s not particularly made for the south, but he loves seeing Zane in Texas. It’s also made known pretty quickly in town that they are a thing, and while tons of people are cool with it because Zane is a good dude, there are of course some traditional assholes down there aiming to give them a hard time. Good thing those two are amazing at just about everything. Even more relieving though is how cool Zane’s sister, brother-in-law, and father are with Zane’s new beau. They recognize some significant and positive changes in Zane that they attribute to Ty.
Aside from all the messing around, they actually do want to help get to the bottom of what’s going on at Zane’s family’s massive ranch, so they rally some troops and go exploring. They also head to a nearby exotic animal shelter where Ty makes friends with some more cats. Rescued circus tigers, to be more exact. They aren’t sure why other cats are being taken, and though drugs seem like the obvious answer, they struggle to make sense of how that can be done out of such a remote and desolate area of their ranch. Things get serious, as they usually do in this novel, and of course neither Zane or Ty walk away unscathed, but they do come out of it with more people on their side.
I am just getting ready to get started with the next novel in the series, and I have absolutely no clue what awaits me – I can’t wait!