BOOK REVIEW- Slater's Revenge (Shades of Leverage Book 1) by Claudia Shelton

 Each book in the Shades of Leverage series is STANDALONE

Description

Former vice cop Mackenzie Baudin is at the top of criminal organization Coercion Ten’s hit list. If they get hold of her, she’ll be leveraged against her uncle, director of OPAQUE’s special ops force. She’s now saddled with agent-protector Josh Slater. He might be hotter than ever, but she’ll never forgive him for walking out on her ten years ago. Unfortunately her penthouse, which is now his domain, is way too small for the both of them.
No one else knows better than OPAQUE agent Josh Slater how to thwart Coercion Ten. After all these years, he's closing in on the crime boss who bought his father for a bank account, but, that entails returning to his hometown to protect his boss's niece. The only woman he ever loved. Sexy, gorgeous Macki, who he was forced to leave behind. And he can never tell her why.
 AMAZON  5 STARS
  Good main characters with a painful history that still hurts them all these years after.
Mackenzie or Macki as Josh calls her is a multi-level successful, fierce woman.  She is also someone who does NOT like being told what to do.  Her chauffeur Ed mentioned that she got back up every time life knocked her down. Sometimes she took unusual routes to stand the pain but she kept her eye on the horizon. Always moving forward.  That statement was proven time and again.
Josh is a very skilled man as well but because of his main focus of protection without feelings he also comes across as a jerk quite often. 
Detective Cummings is even more of a jerk as well as his Lt. Grey. Both were pushy and overbearing.  Cummings was always invading her space.  Even made me want to hit him. I really didn't understand why they thought they had the right to be all up in her business.  And I just wasn't sure if that was all it was it was or if one or the other was a criminal.  Maybe even both.  It's going to take some time to figure out which side of the law that they really fall on.  
I liked that Josh was such a complex man and that Macki observed that he had two different personas.  That when he strapped on his guns he switched from being the Josh she knew to going into his protection mode personality, Agent Slater.  Or should that be lack of personality in order to be more accurate.  
Team Shades was an interesting mention of people who no matter where they were in the world if a call went out for help, they all responded if they could.
There was plenty of interesting characters on both sides.  Good guys and bad guys included. It was nice that it didn't make the story hard to follow though.
This story was full of emotion and crazy action.  Crazy in a good way for the reader. The romance part was pretty good too.  
Huge twists and surprises head towards a dramatic finish.  A Epilogue is included which I always enjoy. I ended up totally loving this story and look forward to more in the series.  This was one FULL story.



 “I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”