Warrior's Cross

I've read the Cut & Run" series by this author and loved, loved, loved it...okay I was obsessed with it. Enough to have read it 5 times and still counting. When I saw this new series I was very anxious to get a copy. I found that was easier said than done. Amazon advertises the price of the paperback at $330.00 Why? Heaven only knows and I'm obviously not on Heaven's "to know" list. I'm hoping that the decimal is misplaced. I recognized Julian & Cameron from Armed & Dangerous...so it was a little like visiting old friends. The writing is as usual, wonderful...the scenes are vivid. You never have so much description that the story lags. You can tell from the cover that there's going to be men with guns on the scene, but the suspense is show more slowly draw out. The author is so good at setting up the characters but it's never obvious where the story is going, so the surprise is still genuine at each plot twist. The secretive job is never truly explained but it's always implied. With other books, this can be a drawback but here it only served to put the reader in the shoes of the main character. Waiting for much more but not at $300.00 for a paperback:) show less

I'm kind of divided about this story. I attempted to read it once before (2010-ish), but I didn't I get more than half or 2/3 of the way through. That is not a reflection of the novel itself (I just get easily distract by shiny things).

Anyway...I am now (some would say *finally* reading Cut & Run, and a little birdie has informed me Julian Cross and Cameron Jacob make an appearance in [b:Armed & Dangerous|13246997|Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run, #5)|Abigail Roux|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336877024s/13246997.jpg|18447540] (among other later volumes), so I thought I'd give it another go, because I'm a little OCD like that:

Alright, I liked the characters (Julian, Cameron, Preston, Blake, dogs *and* cats). I wasn't blown away by any of show more them (though I really liked Preston, but that might have been because he reminded me a little of someone else I'm quite enamoured of).

It is a good novel, it has a well-paced plot. If anything detracted from my enjoyment, it was the fact that I read it smack in the middle of Cut & Run. And it's not so much that the action and excite for those novels is higher (though it is) but that the relationship of the two main characters is different (it has more time to develop, but them, by the very nature of being who they are and having different personalities, have a different story).

Julian and Cameron are different people and have a much more low key kind of story. Plus there's the fact that for much of the story, we see the events as they unfold from Cameron's POV, and Cameron doesn't really know who Julian is, what his life is like, etc...

We have a case of opposite (the assassin and the normal, everyday guy). It's a little more complicated than that, but as we don't see things from Julian'sperspective we can't always see that.

Still, it's a good story, and I won't mind seeing them in Ty and Zane's universe (though I'm having all sorts of visual's about clashing personalities and how misunderstandings might ensue)

I guess we'll have to see how that shakes out... show less

This was one of the first m/m romance that made me say WOW! A real plot. A real story, not just sex scenes strung together. I've now read this book multiple time and it still gets me. 4.5 stars

All the excitement of Armed & Dangerous left me so fired up, that I wasn't quite ready to relinquish Julian and Cameron. I wanted to know what all the heavy hints were all about, not to mention finally see one of their physical encounters to the end, instead of just the teasing glimpses. You don't just make those characters all lovey-dovey and hot-n-bothered, only to have the scene play out off screen! I don't care that they weren't the main couple, that was just mean!

Unfortunately, all I ended up getting here were a lot of longing stares, cryptic statements, playful puppies, and way too many fade-out sex scenes. Was there a hard-limit for on-screen intercourse, that the authors had to follow? Because all I got from it was frustration, show more on top of my overall boredom.

Speaking of boredom, why was the story only told from Cameron's point of view?! I mean, the guy was a waiter with basically no life outside his work?? Sure, some pining can go a long way to achieve those yummy stomach-butterflies, but too much of it is just painful(ly dull) to go through.

Score: 2.3/5 stars

Nowhere near the excitement of the sequel, just cute, fluffy, and towards the end, rather heavy-handed with the soap-opera tropes. show less

I'm a fan of both Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban they excel at developing their characters and endowing them with personality and an emotional depth that draws me into their lives and into the story - but this book completely misses the mark for me. I couldn't connect with either Julian or Cameron. I just didn't like either one, especially Cameron - his constant insecurity and worry over why Julian would find him attractive or have any interest in him set my teeth on edge. Neither the story nor the characters held my interest. This book is an exception for me with these writers - Caught Running and the Cut & Run series are fantastic books that I've worn out the pages from re-reading.

This book had a really intriguing beginning, but it began to bog down midway, and by the end I was skimming. There is a lot of exposition in this book, it is not hard core m/m, sex scenes were few and not very explicit, this is really a romance, and not an erotic novel (which is a plus for me.) I liked the idea of Cameron the waiter, noticing the mysterious Julian Cross, customer at the high end restaurant and fantasizing about him. And then, remarkably, Julian makes a pass and a relationship starts. However the relationship is completely controlled and bounded by Julian and his job, which he never quite explains. He does it to protect Cameron, but the lack of information becomes frightening in itself. Part of the weakness in the book show more is that we see it mainly from Cameron's point of view, and he can't understand why someone as fabulous as Julian would fall in love with him, and frankly, neither could I. It was more that Cameron was so not part of his regular life, that Julian could pretend he was a good guy, a normal guy, a gentle soul when he was with Cameron, so it was more about how Cameron made him feel about himself, than anything intrinsic to Cameron. And when they had that whole trust issue, Cameron's inability to express himself became a problem for the narrative, as he could not find the right questions to ask. The end was predictable and annoying for me, I kept thinking, just get on with it. I hate uber villains and while so much of the 'action' had been off page, it felt weird to bring in front and center for the end. In the final analysis the relationship was too one note for me, and never approached real, even within the heightened reality of the book. I agree that Julian had risked more, and ironically been more emotionally present, but we never understood why. I guess I couldn’t see what he saw in Cameron, and that is a failure on the writer's part. I would rate it a B-, and don't feel an urgent need to go look at the rest of their backlog of books. show less

I first met Julian and Cameron in the Cut and Run series, where their fates were entertained with Zane and Ty’s. I always wanted to read their story, so when I stumbled upon this book I started it immediately. Honestly, that wasn’t what I expected from the book, but I liked it very much. I can’t remember who Blake is, but I have a feeling that I have read about him before. In Warrio’s cross I like Cam more than I did in the Cut and Run books and Julian has managed to remain a mystery to me.