TITLE: Covert Operation
AUTHOR: Jemma Westbrook (pen name for Janice Whiteaker)
SERIES: Alaskan Security: Team Shadow #1; Alaskan Security #13
RELEASE DATE: 12/27/2024
GENRE: Romantic Suspense
RATING: ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
SPICE LEVEL: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
BLURB:
It’s been a year since I’ve felt safe.
A year of looking over my shoulder and struggling to sleep at night, afraid of everyone and everything.
Except for him.
I knew it was wrong to watch Zeke the way I did, but I couldn’t stop myself. He was so big. So strong. Calm and controlled.
He was also lethal and deadly. The kind of man capable of conquering everyone and everything.
Just what I needed.
So I collected every bit of bravery I possessed and asked for his help, hoping he wouldn’t turn me down.
He didn’t.
Now I’m spending every day at his side, learning to be my own hero. He makes me feel strong. Confident. Understood.
He also makes me want what I never expected to want again. To be touched. To be held. To be desired. I know he feels the same—I see how he looks at me when he doesn’t realize I’m watching—but I also know he’ll never act on it. If I want more from him, I’ll have to be the one to make it happen.
Luckily, someone’s been teaching me how to be brave.
How to reach for what I want and grab it.
And how to hold on tight enough no one can take it away.
🎀She’s a girly girl
🧸He’s a deadly teddy bear
🛏️She keeps his nightmares away
🍳He learns to make her favorite food
💔PTSD
🩱That balcony scene 🥵
MY REVIEW:
This was my first read of 2025 and I absolutely loved it! The Alaskan Security series is one of my favorites. It feels like coming home any time I get to read a new book in the series. I loved getting reacquainted with some old characters, getting to meet new characters, and being absolutely floored (in a good way) by the appearance of some characters from another one of my favorite series by Janice Whiteaker.
Zeke has been around since at least Book 5 in the Alaskan Security series, Strategic Maneuvers, and has completely fascinated Janice’s/Jemma’s readers ever since he stepped on the page! Savannah hasn’t been around quite that long, but she did first appear in Book 9, Defensive Alliance, and has kind of been lurking in the shadows (I think I just made a pun😏 lol) ever since.
After reading this book, these two have cemented themselves as two of my favorite characters in the series, and one of my favorite couples in the series! I absolutely loved that Janice/Jemma paired Zeke with Savannah! Getting a whole book focused on Zeke was not only exciting, but also heartbreaking when Janice/Jemma began leaking his backstory throughout the pages of this book. Savannah’s story, if you’ve read Defensive Alliance you know is a harrowing tale, and I feel like Zeke and Savannah balanced each other well in this book! They were the calm to each other’s storms!
If you’ve never read this series before, and you’re wondering about if you can read this book as a standalone, I would say no. I think this story would be much more enjoyable if you read at least from Defensive Alliance onward, if not Strategic Maneuvers. I’d recommend starting with Book 1, Loss Recovery (or it’s prequel Collateral Damage), so you get the full enjoyment of the series, but that would be 12-13 books you’d have to binge read before reading this one.
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The tie-in to the Lost Boys series, particularly the Saints and Sinners series, blew my freakin’ mind! I absolutely loved that Zeke and Christian grew up together, and I loved that we got to see Alaskan Security’s Team Shadow and the Lost Boys team up in the end! I am absolutely ecstatic and can’t wait to see how these two groups come together in future Team Shadow books!