Title: Wreck & Ruin
Author:  Emma Slate
Publisher/Year:  Tabula Rosa Publishing 12/15/19
Length:  304 Pages
Series: Blue Angels #1

Overview

My life is boring. Monotonous.

And then tall, dark, and dangerous walks into the bar where I work.

Before I know it, I’m in his arms asking him to rescue me.

He’s Colt Weston, President of the Blue Angels MC.

Colt makes me feel alive…and wanted.

The Blue Angels embrace me as one of their own, and when a violent rival threatens to tear us apart, I learn what loyalty truly means.

Family. Sacrifice. Revenge.

There’s nothing Colt won’t do to protect me.

My Thoughts

The summary sets the scene nicely but doesn’t give us the full depth and breadth into what we’re about to start enjoying. This is a standalone story in the Blue Angels series, the first of many stories I hope, and it’s intense.

Just like we read above, we start off at Dive Bar, a place where Mia works. She’s being pestered by a customer when two incredibly handsome men walk in wearing biker leathers and looking like trouble (in the best sort of way). She rushes over to the bikers and asks one to pretend to be her boyfriend to get the other guy out of her hair. He kisses her, and their worlds change for ever. They just don’t know it yet.

Mia is innocent in a sense that she has no idea who she’s kissed and what that means. Her best friend Shelly though is fully aware of MCs and who the Blue Angels are and that she should steer clear. No problem for Mia since she’s not interested in anything right now.

In the same 24 hours, Mia finds herself in the crosshairs of another MC – the Iron Horsemen and Dev – their Prez. he’s ‘doing business’ with Richie, Mia’s boss at the bar, and corners Mia, kisses her as well to effectively stake claim and from there we know this story is going to be a ROLLER COASTER.

The ride is fast and furious because there’s something Dev wants that he thinks Richie told her about, and Mia is forced to go to the Blue Angels for protection. We all know how this story will play out. Naive innocent girl sucked into a life of danger and will it work? who knows. Will she find love? we don’t know.

But what we do know is that given that it’s in Waco, and the Blue Angels, we know that Flynn/Barrett, Ramsey and some of the others from SINS will pop up since Waco and the MC were where Ramsey spent some time post his breakup with his British girl.

This story takes us on a journey of self growth, figuring out who you are by yourself and then who you are with and to others. Mia has had a rough life with her mom passing when she was really young, and her grammie passing a few years prior. She’s never known her father (who actually makes an appearance in a very unexpected way in this story) and all of this shapes her into a woman who is independent but is forced to rely on others due to circumstances out of her control. Everything that she thought she wanted for herself has changed, and her idea of family and the future are completely pivoted.

At the same time we watch our leading man Colt pull his walls down. We learn from his sister Jonie that he’s been closed off for years, that they are also orphans of a sort and that it takes someone who sees past the the outside shell, the MC and the hard edges to make him laugh. There’s potential for Mia to do that, but we watch them fight each other.

There are bittersweet moments since we have quite a bit of death in this story as to be expected, and we wonder what the implications will be in the long run for happiness, closure and revenge. (yet another theme that we see quite a bit in Emma Slate books). Some of our favorites don’t make it through to the end, and some give us hope for future installments of the series since the stories are definitely going to be entertaining and juicy.

So on that note, dive into this one, enjoy the steamy hot scenes and the roller coaster of the underground criminal world, and wait patiently with me for book 2 to arrive in November. Enjoy!