Badlands by Callie Hart

Item: Badlands
Rating: 5
Author: Lily

January 6, 2016 Lily Book Review, Quickie 0 ★★★★★

Badlands by Callie Hart
Series: Blood & Roses, Dead Man's Ink
Also in this series: Rebel, Rogue, Ransom
Published by Self-published on December 23rd 2015
Pages: 48
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***Badlands is a special edition mini novella, covering themes from both the Blood & Roses series and the Dead Man's Ink series.***

Michael Aubertin has an arrangement - one that not only suits him, but also the couple he spends time with, too. No strings. No questions. No complications. Nothing could be simpler.

His work life, on the other hand...

With strange, intense women showing up on his employer's doorstep, dodging crazed English mob bosses, and dealing with a long-lost cousin on a mission, Michael's day couldn't possibly get more complicated.

Badlands is a short story, released especially for Christmas 2015. Michael will be receiving his own full-length story in late 2016.

This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence.

Wow! Badlands packs a lot of punch for its size. Highly recommend it…

Callie Hart has done it again, another great story linking in to both the Blood & Roses as well as the Dead Man’s Ink Series. Michael is Zeth Mayfair’s trusted employee, one who is always there in the background and it was good to have a scenario told from his point of view. He didn’t disappoint of course, since he has Zeth’s trust and that is something you don’t earn lightly.

Michael’s enjoying some R & R, well he’s enjoying a lot more with the convenient arrangement he has in place. His personal life kept low key previously, we now get to see he is not missing out at all! Then his phone goes off and it’s back to work he goes.

His call-out is a delicate situation which he handles in his usual efficient way, carefully, as this request has him walking a dangerous line and needs to stay under the radar as much as possible.

The good ones. They do exist, it would seem.

He runs into a good Samaritan along the way who helps him out. The passerby acknowledged Michael’s warning assisting a stranger could get him into trouble but it wasn’t in the stranger to not help a good person. It’s not until later on Michael concedes, maybe he can claim to be a good person. I’m going to leave who the good Samaritan is as a surprise, but this along with his time with Lacey were my favourite moments in a short story that packed a lot of goodness into its 48 pages.

Normally I would balk at considering buying a book of this size but the quality of the story has already found me recommending it to others. At the time I purchased Badlands it was under a dollar!

Lily’s Rating: 5 Stars