Review: Premise is interesting, but...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2014
Levi has recently returned from Afghanistan where he served as a Marine. He is one of a group of five friends that had been together since boot camp. He had plans to make the military his career, but once he is injured and forced to take a medical discharge. He finds himself back in his hometown, working for his father in building, something he had never seen himself doing.Harper is the spit fire little sister of Levi’s battle buddy and best friend Gavin, whom died while deployed in Afghanistan. While she has known Levi most of her life, when she sees him at her brother’s funeral, she lashes out at him, blaming him for the loss of her brother. But when odd things start happening to her like threats, slashed tires and such, the urge to protect her overtakes Levi and regardless of her feelings on the matter, Levi intends to protect her, just like her brother would have.Harper has been a champion for one cause or another her whole life, and after her brother’s death, she is certain there is more to the story than the military is letting on, and as a journalist, she is going to dig as deep as she can to find out the truth. Knowing that the military doesn’t give up its secrets that easily, Levi tries to keep Harper from going too far and putting her life in danger.The relationship between the two starts to heat up, but not without the constant back and forth arguing between the two. Honestly, Harper often times came across as an immature brat and Levi felt overbearing, even as an alpha-male. The relationship between the two just really didn’t do that much for me. Harper just seemed like a character that constantly had something to prove, which just made her unlikeable.Duty Bound was a quick and easy read, however I really didn’t feel all that connected to the characters. In many parts of the book you could definitely tell a difference between the writing styles of the two authors. On one hand you had very choppy, short sentences, on the other you had more complexity that seemed to flow more easily. This became a little bit of a distraction throughout the book. This is a first in the series and I’m not sure I’ll continue with it because I really didn’t come away from this one feeling at all invested in any of the supporting players. They simply felt like people in the background that Levi had drinks with every once in awhile. Three stars for this one.