On Broken Wings
Chanel Cleeton     
December 2021 Releases

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Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: A Wild Aces Romance
Book: 3
Heat Level: Sensual/Hot

The author of Into the Blue and Fly with Me returns with the newest, hot and high-flying Wild Aces romance...

A year after losing her husband, Joker, the squadron commander of the Wild Aces, Dani Peterson gets an offer from his best friend, Alex “Easy” Rogers, to help fix up her house. Dani accepts, and their friendship grows—along with an undeniable attraction.

Racked by guilt for loving his best friend’s widow, Easy’s caught between what he wants and can’t have. Until one night everything changes, and the woman who’s always held his heart ends up in his arms. Yet as Easy leaves for his next deployment, he and Dani are torn between their feelings and their loyalty to Joker’s memory. 

But when Dani discovers something that sends them both into a spin, the conflicted lovers must overcome the past to navigate a future together…

Other books in the series:

We first meet Alex “Easy” Rogers and Dani Peterson in Fly With Me, the first book in Chanel Cleeton’s Wild Aces series. We quickly learn that he’s been in love with Dani—his squadron commander (Joker’s) wife—since almost the first time he laid eyes on her. She, of course, doesn’t think of him that way. She’s happily married and very much in love with her husband. You had to feel bad for the guy. Unrequited love is not fun. It’s even worse when your unrequited love is married to your friend. But Easy pushes on, playing the footloose bachelor and losing himself in the arms of attractive, willing women.

Then Joker dies and everything changes.

I just knew Easy and Dani’s romance would tear at my heart. Mission accomplished. If I could equate their story to anything it would be how you feel when you’ve dying for something you can’t have, like a decadent dessert when you’re on a diet. Then the day comes when you can finally have it and you practically inhale it without really savoring it the way you should. You can’t savor it, you’re too hungry, have been too long deprived. After you’re done, you feel sated and happy. But the next time you have it a week or two later, you eat it slower, truly savoring its goodness, and it tastes better than it did two weeks ago. That in a nutshell is my reading of On Broken Wings.

The first time I read it, I stormed through it. I may have skipped words, even paragraphs in my eagerness to get to all the really good parts. The second time I read it, I savored every word, every scene. My true appreciation of just how wonderful this book is came in my second reading of it. If I felt bad for Easy before (prior books), it didn’t compare to how much I felt for him now.

After Joker dies, he tries to stay away from Dani. But that doesn’t work. Then he tries to just be there for her as a good friend. Yeah, that doesn’t work either. He loves her and that isn’t going to change—at least not anytime soon if ever.

Then we have Dani. A year after her husband’s death, she’s finally surfacing from the unfathomable grief she’s been living in. She’s coming to accept the fact that her life must go on and she still wants things out of it. Her friends convince her that it’s okay to start dating. Well you can imagine what Easy thinks of Dani dating a guy who is not him. Believe me, it’s painful for both of us. But I’m happy to say, that was just a small bump in the road.

What I did enjoy was watching their relationship grow and deepen. I particularly enjoyed the scene where Dani experiences her first sexual awareness of Easy.

I didn’t even bother trying to hide my reaction, because there hardly seemed to be a point. I doubted I was the first, tenth, or even hundredth woman to lose her shit in the face of Easy’s body.

I swallowed again, not meeting his gaze, lost somewhere in pec-land. And then I went lower.

Defined, tan abs gave way to indents on either side of his hips. He was tan and smooth, his skin…

Jesus.

No wonder he had so much success with women. If this was what came of hitting the gym and eating healthy, maybe I needed to rethink my life choices.

Say something.

The words tumbled out. “So that working-out thing is working for you, huh?”

Their road to their HEA is neither straightforward or smooth, and boy did I love the twists and turns it took. It was also nice to visit with a pregnant—then not pregnant—Jordan from Fly With Me. She and Dani have grown much closer since Joker’s death. And don’t worry, Thor and Becca—Into the Blue—are there too.

All in all, On Broken Wings is exactly what I hoped and thought it would be, the pinnacle to a fantastic series and a book that I’ve put on my keeper shelf.