Beneath the Surface by Mila HartMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Full disclosure: I got to read this one in an earlier draft, so watching it land in final form felt a little like watching a plant you helped stake finally bloom. And it blooms.
Sloan Locke is a former Army sniper turned government contractor, which means her entire life has been built on one skill — watching without being watched. She retreats to her family’s Colorado ranch looking for quiet and instead finds a dead body, a mysterious new ranch hand named Rowan Thorn, and a slow, dangerous unraveling of everything she thought she’d buried. What follows is a genuinely well-paced slow burn — Hart doesn’t rush the suspicion into attraction, she lets it curdle and simmer until you believe it.
What I loved most is how the romance actually talks to the suspense plot instead of just sitting next to it. Sloan spends the whole book as the one who watches — that’s her training, her armor, the thing that’s kept her alive. Rowan is the first person who gets her to put that armor down, and the shift in power between them (who’s watching whom, who’s allowed to be vulnerable) becomes the emotional engine of the whole book, not just the spice. Sloan is precise and guarded everywhere else on the page — watching her learn to let go with Rowan hits harder because of it.
The suspense side holds its own too — Greywatch’s shadow-empire secrets, an investigative reporter circling for a story, a squatting family stirring up trouble, and a grief for Sloan’s twin sister that colors every decision she makes. Nothing here feels like filler; the danger and the desire are genuinely tangled together, which is exactly what the blurb promises.
Heads up for readers: this is a spicy sapphic romance with explicit content, so know that going in — but the heat is earned, not gratuitous, and it’s doing real character work.
The ending makes clear this is the start of something bigger rather than a fully closed loop, which I actually appreciated — it left me wanting the next installment instead of feeling cut off. If you like your romance with teeth, your suspense with a real emotional core, and a slow burn that actually pays off, this one delivers.
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