Hold Your Breath (Search and Rescue #1) by Katie Ruggle

  Hold Your Breath by Katie Ruggle

Blurb: 

In the remote Rocky Mountains, lives depend on the Search & Rescue brotherhood. But in a place this far off the map, trust is hard to come by and secrets can be murder...

As the captain of Field County's ice rescue dive team, Callum Cook is driven to perfection. But when he meets new diver Louise "Lou" Sparks, all that hard-won order is obliterated in an instant. Lou is a hurricane. A walking disaster. And with her, he's never felt more alive...even if keeping her safe may just kill him.

Lou's new to the Rockies, intent on escaping her controlling ex, and she's determined to make it on her own terms...no matter how tempting Callum may be. But when a routine training exercise unearths a body, Lou and Callum find themselves thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who will stop at nothing to silence Lou-and prove that not even her new Search and Rescue family can keep her safe forever.


I loved this book, like- opening it-reading it-and-not putting down-loving it. You might want to think hard about starting to read the books by Katie Ruggle because you might end up like me: Reading one book and having to read all other books by her.

Fast-paced, charming, outright funny, nail-bitingly thrilling, tear-evoking and foolish-grin-producing, this book is amazing. Whereas our hero remains a bit distant even though you get a rather good idea of his character and his past and know that he is honorable and trustworthy, you get a very vivid image of our heroine.

Callum remains something of a mystery, this dark and brooding guy whose life is changed by a sweet and charming (and sarcastic) woman, you know, but Lou, well, it isn't easy to describe Lou. Lou is a bit like a ray of sunshine, touching the lives of those around her without even realizing it. She is strong, resilient, warm and lively, absolutely ignorant of the way other people see her and react to her without ever being naive. It's a fine balance that the author has mastered perfectly. For some time I was afraid that due to her upbringing and her innocence she might end up being too naive but that never happened.

Those two were not the only characters that I loved, I also loved all those interesting, very different minor characters, most of them part of the search-and-rescue family. I loved the way they interacted with the heroine and were looking out for her and I'm really looking forward to getting to know them even better in the next books in this series.
The amazing characters are not the only thing that I loved about this book. The story was also amazing, captivating me from the first page on, reducing me to sobs and hick-ups somewhere in between alternating with giggles and shocked gasps  - and on the whole keeping me glued to my reader with its many unexpected twists and turns.

This book is the first one in the "Search and Rescue" series and I can promise you, if you read it, you won't stop there but like me, you'll have to read the other books as well. Like - yesterday.

★★★★★