REVIEW: Tight Quarters (Out of Uniform #6) by Annabeth Albert
Petty Officer Bacon, a navy SEAL and ace sharpshooter, has been on the front lines of more than his fair share of dangerous ops. Yet when a minor injury relegates him to the beta team, he’s tasked with what may be his riskiest assignment yet: the silver fox journalist he’s babysitting is the hottest, most charismatic man he’s ever encountered.
Award-winning journalist Spencer Bryant may have been named one of Pride magazine’s most eligible bachelors of the year, but he’s not looking to change his relationship status. He’s a consummate professional who won’t risk his ethics or impeccable reputation by getting involved with a source. Even a sexy-as-hell military man. But while Spencer can resist his physical attraction to Bacon, he has less control over his emotions—especially when the mission goes sideways and the two men are trapped alone.
Getting out of the jungle alive turns out to be easy compared to facing the truth about their feelings for one another back in the real world. And whether or not they can build a future is a different story altogether.
Dear Annabeth Albert,
Carina Press was giving out free paperback copies of this book when I attended this year’s Bookcon and I managed to grab myself one. I have read the first book in this series, liked it well enough, but did not feel a burning desire to continue. I really enjoyed this one though.
Each book deals with the separate couple, however it sounds as if some guys are friends and/or teammates based on the fact that the couple from one of the previous books is briefly mentioned in this one.
As blurb tells you in this book we have a Navy Seal and an award winning journalist who gets embedded into one of the SEAL teams to tell the story about their mission, as much as the limitations of the information about their exact activities being classified allow anyway.
I really appreciated that the author took care in showing us the military settings – the trainings, the missions, the mindset of the SEALS. Of course I never served, so all of this could be incorrect, but at least based on the knowledge from the secondary sources a lot of this felt authentic enough. The author also talks a little about her research in the end of the book, so I decided to take the correctness of the setting on faith.
Bacon gets assigned a “babysitting” duty because he has a minor injury that does not require hospitalization but forces him to the sidelines of the mission so to speak. I thought that Bacon conducted himself as a professional would, despite wanting to be in the middle of the action rather than safeguarding the journalist. I loved him and I loved Spencer too. I liked that they were both dedicated to their jobs. I often wonder how the author would handle the conflict between the guys being the dedicated professionals in their field and their newly found attraction and often I am not happy as to how such story would play out. I think I was quite satisfied as to how this was handled in this book.
Spencer is the person who gets to struggle more with his work ethics than Bacon, because he was planning to write the book based on the conversations with Bacon and his team and sleeping with the source is not exactly an ethical thing to do. Did they behave perfectly? Well, no, but close enough in my book and the consequences of the choices definitely played out for both of them.
Somehow the author sold these guys and their romance to me. Some of the scenes between them were achingly sweet without giving me a toothache.
The only nitpick I have is the sex scenes. They were not boring, but unfortunately for me – nothing to write home about. I am really hard to please with the sex scenes though.
Grade: B
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I got this one as an ARC from NetGalley, and I enjoyed it a lot as well. I’ve liked a couple of Annabeth Albert’s books and novellas and enjoyed almost all of them. She just writes about likable characters, people I would genuinely enjoy knowing in real life. Weirdly enough, that’s actually kind of rare for me to find in romance novels, and it means I just root for their happy ending even more.
Like you, I hadn’t much in this specific series, and now I kind of want to catch up.
I’ve enjoyed a number of other books by Annabeth Albert and am looking forward to reading this one, too. Thanks for the review, Sirius.
I haven’t read any of this series (the ebooks are expensive for their genre and some reviews have put me off) but they all have wonderful covers!
Oceanjasper I usually find Carina’s ebooks to be 2.99 -3.99 ? I know this one is 4.99 but it is longer than your usual romance ( over 300 pages), I am just talking about the comparison prices . I don’t mean to question your assessment of these series as expensive , I am just saying that in most small pubs I saw books pricing higher than those .
Yes! Covers are beautiful in general and for this one I thought hug reflected specific moment in the book which was very nice .
What type of mission is this? I’m just curious because I tend to associate SEALs with secret special ops or counter-terrorism missions, and I can’t imagine a journalist getting embedded in those.
Janine this was obtaining intelligence anti terrorism mission . They had to grab something specific I thought and the journalist was not supposed to go on the very last part . It made sense to me .
Jan yes absolutely I really liked both Spenser and Bacon and liked how they figured out a compromise working for them where their jobs are concerned . I have a pet peeve as to “unprofessional professional” in romance trope and I liked that at least people seem to ne facing consequences of their imperfect behavior .
I have not read the previous book in the series but it appeared to me that the couple who left the military together to work in private security could have faced fraternization charges and the guy who mentions them is aware that this is still very much a thing and was being cautious when he talked about his friends .
@Sirius: Yeah, but I’m in Australia and get my ebooks from amazon, so I’m not seeing those kind of prices. On the US site this book is showing as $6.76 for me, but Australians are now blocked from purchasing anything from amazon.com due to the pissing contest between our current government and amazon (and that price is USD anyway).
On amazon.com.au this book is $9.06 at the moment. No way I’m paying that. The best thing about getting a kindle back in the day was escaping the astronomical price of books in Australia, but not so much anymore….
Oceanjasper oh I see . It is definitely expensive I completely agree.