Protective Instinct by Fiona Quinn - 4 stars and a woof!

[Theresa]

Another terrific escape! I kept it at 4 stars although a couple of minor writing crutches bothered me and the heroine sometimes grated on me, but only because she reminded me of someone who in real life can irritate the hell out of me. 😜 I decided not to penalize the author for this last as it meant she actually did a great job of creating a realistic character!

Ridge and his dog Zeus are part of an elite private company specializing in going into places where governments cannot go. He's former special ops and a seasoned operative. His dog Zeus is a superb tracker and trained to take down bad guys. Harper Katz clearly has secrets, even her name is a tip-off to the reader, but since she's personal assistant to a Hollywood starlet (and OMG does the author have fun with Berlin, the starlet! And pokes fun at the whole social media celebrity obsession), and she's good at it, the whole hiding in the background, avoiding giving personal informatin and hiding from cameras, may not be so odd. Until she is material in preventing a pervert kidnapping teen girls. Ridge and his team are part of the capture of the pervert, and are promptly hired by Berlin to be her personal bodyguards so she can rider the coat tails of their success. As with the first in the series, there is layers of plotting, fully developed characters, a dog to die for, and a final twist that you might think you see coming but not completely. The sex and romance is a little more front and center in this one but still secondary to the mystery and danger surrounding Harper.

At this point, a couple of writing crutches of the author were really bugging me - characters are always curling their lips inward to evince certain emotions or thoughts, and instead of brushing someone's are or patting or touching it, someone is always petting it (they are also often petting the Zeus - maybe just a copyediting error - that does not show up in the 1st and 3rd in the trilogy). But not enough to turn me off the books or downgrade the rating. Harper is a somewhat irritating character - a highly intelligent artist who is fascinated by psychology and science. She has long passages on color theory and other things that end up being key to the story in one way or another. But even these are well handled --- Berlin frequenty interrupts and says 'enough with the long epilogue get to the point!'

A real positive: Harper is really curvy and there are frequent descriptions of fat shaming directed to her and her reactions to them which are strong and positive as she knows she is sexy, likes her body and in fact is a marathon runner. I liked the way this was handled.