Run to Ground (Rocky Mountain K9 Unit, #1)

by Katie Ruggle

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I became a fan of Katie Ruggle with her Search & Rescue series. So I jumped on this book when I saw it was available. It has the same first responder in a small town feel to it. It is set in a small town not far from the Search & Rescue series. There is even a character cross over, but feel free to start with this book. You will not be at all lost if you haven’t read Search & Rescue before starting this series (though I highly recommend S&R just because it is fun).

Both the hero and heroine of this story have a lot of baggage. The hero just lost his partner (as in he is a cop and his cop partner). His partner was not just his partner, but also his mentor and best friend. So you can imagine the devastation when his partner commits suicide. Now Theodore Bosco has been partnered with his partner’s dog. The dog is also devastated and doesn’t want to work. They are both very broody.

Jules has her own baggage. She is on the run. She has kidnapped her three brothers and her sister. Her father has alzheimer’s and her step-mom is evil, but plays the mother of the year routin well in front of other people. She will never get custody of them, no matter how good of a lawyer she finds. That is when she is offered help from an unexpected relative of her former boss (who is now in prison). She is relocated to a small town in Colorado, which is far away from Florida and her family.

This is another fun story from Katie Ruggle. I love the characters that she writes. I really loved Jules and Theo. I loved Jule’s oldest brother, Sam the best. He is really a great kid. They are all great kids, but there is just something about Sam-I-Am, that I loved. Viggie, Theo’s bomb dog, was another great character. It can be so hard on the pets when their owner died, but Viggie wasn’t just a pet, but a work partner too. They were always together. I completely believe that a police dog would refuse to work after the death of the human partner.

Narration
This is my first book with Callie Beaulieu narrating. I will admit that I was a little bummed when I saw that they didn’t continue with the same narrator that they used for the Search and Rescue series, Rachel Dulude. I really liked Rachel. After listening to Callie, I do enjoy her narration, but not quite as much as Rachel’s. There were some time where I think it was a little hard to tell who was talking, some of the voices were similar and I think she broke out of a character’s voice more than once. I do have to give her a big plus for voicing Sam. He has a really bad stutter and she did a great job of getting his stutter down. I think the voices of the other kids were good too. Still a good listen.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.