The Commander by Melanie Moreland

Sweet but drama filled, The Commander is perhaps the swooniest of the series. It’s the sort of book that has you biting your nails one minute but then feeling all warm and fuzzy the next.

Book three in the Men of Hidden Justice series is focused on Julian and Tally. Julian is the head of Elite Security but even more so the guy that calls the shots when it comes to who, when, and where Hidden Justice will target next. Tally is his newly hired secretary desperately in need of a job to add to her bartending gig, since she’s just scraping by having just graduated as an art history major. From the moment Julian lays eyes on Tally, he’s smitten. In this book, we get to see how their relationship goes from boss/employee to friendship to much more.

Since the first book, I had a feeling that Julian would be my favorite, and I wasn’t disappointed. He’s charming yet guarded at the start, and there’s a warmth to his character that I wasn’t really expecting. He’s an all-in kind of guy, and while he’s definitely a force to be reckoned with in his regular life, with Tally he’s a total sweetheart. Tally’s also guarded but for reasons we don’t find out right away. She’s lived a very difficult life before finding Julian, and that informs all of her actions throughout the book. I like her resilience and the realness of her character’s attitude. Some of my favorite parts of this book are when she sasses back at or pokes fun at Julian. Together their characters work, but there’s plenty of drama to go along with them, too. All the conflict is what makes this story interesting and not just a sweet love story. I definitely enjoyed all the angst both Julian and Tally had to go through to get to where they finally ended up.

Overall, I feel like this is almost a cautionary tale of how insidious lies can become in a relationship. Both Julian and Tally kept things from one another, and those lies by omission (and sometimes outright lies) almost cost them dearly. There’s a lot of stress incurred by them both rather unnecessarily, because in the end they simply didn’t trust each other with their truths. I do wish we would’ve seen more of how hard they had to work at building their trust back up, but the pacing works for their story.

The Commander is a solid story of what happens when lies and the truth about the past catch up to two people. It’s got equal parts sweetness, steam, and tension, and it’s a great addition to the series.