Marine Ecologist Annie Henderson travels to Scotland to participate in an environmental protest against North Sea oil drilling. But instead of the peaceful sit-in she expects, Annie discovers she’s an unwitting participant in a violent plot that could ultimately cost her life.
SEAL Senior Captain Dean Baylor is keeping a low profile these days, working as a charter boat captain in Stornoway, Scotland, using the name Dan Warren. He went dark after his clandestine SEAL Team Nine was ambushed and essentially wiped out on a covert mission in Siberia two months before.
While Dan comes to terms with the loss and searches for answers, his path intersects with Annie’s while the deadly oil drilling plot is unfolding. They’ve both been betrayed by people they trusted, and the last thing either of them needs right now is a relationship. She’s a distraction he can’t afford, but the chemistry between them is impossible to resist.
This tightly plotted tale has great timing and tension. Readers are lead on one breathless chase after another. Annie’s trusting nature and Dan’s brooding SEAL vigilance are a winning combination as danger just will not leave them alone. Romantic suspense at its finest.

4.5 Stars Going Dark is a military, romantic suspense and the first book I have read by Monica McCarty. I found this story had a great balance between romance and plot and with its twists and turns kept me intrigue throughout. This story is about primarily about Dean and Annie but we also meet other seals hiding across the world out in search of the enemy who betrayed them. I look forward to seeing where we are taken next in this great new series.

This is a switch for Monica McCarty but her strong sexy heroes carry over well into contemporary romances! Sexy and yet romantic, thrilling and exciting but the characters feel real. It was a fun, intriguing read and I can't wait for the next of the LOST PLATOON books!

I was drawn in by the book blurb, wanted to know more about how a whole SEAL team could disappear and of course the romance. The romance was covered, but not much about the SEAL team, what happened to them and the aftermath. It drives me nuts, but I have a feeling that will end up being a larger story arc across the series, a bummer because it seems like there is a conspiracy working there and I'm impatient and want to know now.

I wasn't a big fan of Annie, there were times that she was TSTL. It drove me nuts that Annie didn't see how she was being used and how closed minded she was about men in the military. Granted she had a good reason that we learned about later. It didn't help that I hated how Annie treated Dan, right from the start she seemed to look down on him. That behavior didn't change much even as Dan was doing his best to save Annie from trouble. Even as I didn't care for Annie, I did like watching Dan and Annie fight their attraction as they were on the run. I did like how this one ended, loved that Annie was able to surprise Dan, while he did the same for her.

I look forward to reading more in this series, to learn more about the SEAL team and what happened.

I was confused at the start of the story, because that first chapter is from a different SEAL's perspective than the rest of the story. I am wondering if I read the rest of the books in the series, then it would be more clear who was talking. I liked the characters in this story a lot. I felt like they had a real connection and I understood why they would like each other. I did feel like the heroine came off really dumb. I guess I could give her the benefit of the doubt and call her "naive", but for someone who is passionate about the environment, who is going on a protesting trip, she sure didn't seem to know a lot about it. And she had no idea that her boyfriend was skeezy? As soon as they said the boat was chartered in her name, she should have been running in the other direction. Overall, I liked it and would read more books in the series. I am curious to figure out the overarching mystery with the SEALs.

A SEAL team paralleling the lost Roman Legion is a mouthwatering prospect. A covert op that had gone so wrong has led to the remaining few scattered around the globe and off the grid, waiting for justice to be served? It's catnip on a platter. As someone who isn’t really into historicals, Monica McCarty’s a new author for me and any addition to the RS sub-genre is something I’m typically happy to pounce on.

Yet the opening was at best, shaky with an overwhelming info-dump that got my head swirling, all in the midst of an op that was going to go bust. Filled with with too many names, ranks and explanations of how the team worked, the first chapter was also oddly anchored by a character who also wasn't the protagonist, which was bewildering to say the least as you only learn of one of the secondary SEALs peripherally mentioned was going to be the hero instead in the next few chapters.

But ‘Going Dark’ hits its stride halfway in, as Dean Baylor (the once Senior Chief)—hiding away in the Hebrides two months after the botched Russian job—gets inadvertently involved in an ecoterrorist plot with a woman who could very well be collateral damage. Nevertheless, I was drawn in by the intrigue and the suspense more than the characters with whom I felt less of an affinity.

Dean/Annie weren’t quite a couple that I could see together—their fiercely opposing ideals aside—as their skin-deep connection simply felt like an adrenaline-fuelled product that would burn bright and hot, but eventually burn out. Dean’s constant rumination about his casual hookups, his usual type of women and Annie not fitting the bill were off-putting to say the least, even when these comparisons were supposed to serve as his internal monologues about Annie’s break from the mould. The latter's environmental-saving, emotional liberalism is the still furthest from his military beliefs however, though attraction comes at the worst possible timing especially since “casual” has always defined Dean’s so-called social life to a tee. Yet Annie’s insecure naïveté—some TSTL lines were crossed—and her need to keep clinging when all they agreed to was a fling that would end when they separated got annoying when she went from a seeming no-nonsense PhD graduate to a weepy, needy woman when she near begs him to stay.

That said though, this is a thoroughly promising series; the other characters definitely intrigue me and Monica McCarty provides enough of a backstory of them as a teaser that makes me enthusiastic for the sequels to come. Action specific to each couple is the focus of every book it seems, though as of now, investigations of the overall mystery crawl on, which make the ending unsatisfactory as none of the pieces have yet fallen into place. But the bright side? There’s still more to look forward to.

A new book, a romantic suspense, none-the-less from Monica McCarty! I have read many of her historical romances and this happens to be the first book in a new series that was really...REALLY good! I am impressed with the story and how developed the characters were and how the romance sizzled in between the danger and thrilling action. It was passionate, scary, sexy, and very well put together. I can't wait for the second book in this new series!

Two philosophically different people come together in this romantic suspense with a twist. It's not your normal Navy Seal saves damsel novel. It starts with the betrayal of the Seals (Dean/Dan) and moves to Scotland for an environmental protest (Annie) that turns bad. This book only made me want to read more to find out what happened to the Navy Seals.

They were sent on a covert mission to Russia, but SEAL Team Nine never returned. It was a deadly trap and all are now presumed dead. Case closed, there would be no investigation and those who survived must go deep underground to await answers on who they could trust and who betrayed them.

Dan Warren has become a dive boat captain in Scotland, staying to himself, sleeping with one eye open, coiled like a snake ready to pounce. He never expected a beautiful woman to literately fall into his lap that night in the pub, nor did he know she would rain down trouble that he cannot avoid getting involved in.

Marine ecologist Annie Henderson was a woman on a mission of passion to protest hazardous offshore drilling. Little did she know she was merely a patsy to take the fall for something far more nefarious. Now she is alone, and in trouble in a foreign country and Dan may be the only person she can turn to for help.

Was it an emotion she stirred within him that made Dan throw caution to the wind to keep her safe? He has worked so hard to stay under the radar but Annie has done the one thing no one else could, she has made him feel again, but to feel anything for her is far more dangerous for them both than she realizes, besides, what would she do if she learned everything he has told her has been a lie?

Monica McCarty’s GOING DARK showcases another dark and brooding male, trained to be the best of the best and a feisty and rather clueless female who leaps before she looks as she lets her emotions blind her to the depths of the trouble she is in.

Looking for that all-male alpha who puts honor before anything else? Like watching them begin to crumble when their heart gets involved? GOING DARK may not be original, but the action is intense and the danger is taut, the hero is hot and in spite of the heroine, this SEAL just may be one cape short of being Superman.

I received an ARC edition from Berkley in exchange for my honest review.

Series: The Lost Platoon - Book 1
Publisher: Berkley (September 5, 2017)
Publication Date: September 5, 2017
Genre: Contemporary Romantic Suspense | Military
Print Length: 352 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

I couldn't get into this one. I love this author's Scottish romance but this feel short for me.

When Dean's SEAL team mission goes horribly wrong, he and the few survivors are ordered to scatter and go dark. Hiding out in a small Scottish town should be easy to keep his cover but when a damsel in distress crosses his path, all bets are off.
Annie knows it was reckless to travel with her new boyfriend to Scotland but she wants to make a difference in the world and protesting an offshore drilling site will hopefully protect the oceanic ecosystem she's worked to get her PhD in. When red flags start to appear though, she knows she's in trouble.
Annie and Dean have a whole lot of trouble chasing them down but their attraction for one another can't be ignored.
 
This new series starts off with intensity as we are introduced to SEAL Team Nine and follow along as they are on a dark ops mission in Russia. There is a lot thrown at you as we are introduced to a wide range of characters and military terms; it’s overwhelming and a bit confusing. The prologue sets the reader up thinking they'll be following along with a certain character only to have a switcheroo, it felt a bit odd. The basic concept though, of a SEAL team scattered throughout the world, hiding out, and searching for who betrayed them, is intriguing, mysterious, and will have you desperate to know more. This story arc weaves in and out as this book focuses on the Senior Chief Dean and his damsel in distress Annie.
 
Annie is introduced as our idealistic, vegetarian, and liberal activist with Dean as our “been around the world twice”, military tough, and conservative leanings hero. With this opposites attract set-up, they naturally had a lot of squabbles. The author did a good job of balancing out the good and bad of both Annie and Dean's ideals, liberal and conservative, but it also had a tendency to make their dialogue and interactions not feel natural and a bit preachy. I, personally, felt their whole liberal vs. conservative back and forth rhetoric somewhat exhausting as everyday life has inundated me with this already. They kind of have an insta-lust connection and because of how full the story is, their emotional connection was lacking for me. There was a scene where Dean talks about his dad but instead of it feeling like a bonding moment with Annie, it felt awkward and as if he was suddenly unloading on her out of nowhere.
 
There is so much going on in this story, the Lost Platoon story line that brings in a cast of characters that includes an old friend of Dean's named Colt and how he is trying to find out what happened to his friends. It's a bit of a secondary couple as Colt has to contact his ex-wife Kate, who we are led to believe slept with one of his teammates and best friend, with the best friend being the Lt Commander of the Lost Platoon, named Scott. So this side story of betrayed Lost Platoon, three way drama between Colt, Katie, and Scott, is beside Dean and Annie running from eco-terrorists. You can see why Annie and Dean's emotional building blocks got a bit left behind.
 
Annie was a bit manipulated to be overly naïve to further the damsel in distress and Dean was forced to be led by his hots for the good looking liberal while a bit confusing eco-terrorists plot kept them together. The main couple was overshadowed by the series arc of the Lost Platoon for me, it’s what kept me reading. Colt and Kate have me wildly curious about their story and I'm locked into finding out who betrayed SEAL Team Nine and just who all the survivors were.

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Monica McCarty is known for her fantastic and well-written Scottish Historicals. This seems like it would be quite shift from Highlanders...except it’s not.



Her Highlanders were strong, honorable, and noble. They wanted to protect their people, and they loved their women with everything they had in them. Her SEALs are no different.



When a mission goes south, the survivors go into hiding.



Annie Henderson has just gotten her doctorate in Marine Ecology, and her new boyfriend has convinced her to go protest offshore drilling in Scotland. She is caught up in both the excitement of actually doing something instead of just writing papers about the long-term results of oil spills, and the idea of an adventure. But once they get to Scotland, she starts to realize how little she knows about her “boyfriend.”



Dean is keeping a low profile and waiting on orders. After their last mission, where he lost half his team, he’s been ordered to hang tight and observe. He’s captaining charter boats in the area as “Dan” when Annie and her new friends are supposed to take his boat to an oil rig.



He knows this isn’t what it seems and bets that they’re eco-terrorists rather than peaceful protesters. It’s a shame Annie doesn’t know.



This is all still the first few chapters. Once Annie realizes that she’s in way over her head, she runs to Dean to let him know what’s going on. He nopes out of there so fast she’s left standing on the deck wondering what he’s doing. Hey, the man’s got orders, and those orders don’t involve rescuing naive women from themselves.



But when one of the group she’s with figures out what happened, he pulls Annie to him with a gun to her head. Dean can’t just let her die. This is where I feel the book really hits its stride. I wanna say it’s still just the first couple of chapters.



Dean and Annie go on the run, and it’s exciting, action-packed, sexy, and emotional. I do think this book has First Book in the Series Syndrome (FBITSS) which is unusual since you usually see that in UF and PNR series. But that’s the thing, this book/series is so well-researched, that the beginning feels like a SEAL action/thriller, and then the romance begins.  



By the third chapter or so, this book hits its stride. I couldn’t put it down! I think the beginning bogs it down a bit. It’s a very well researched book, and I loved that! But it can be a lot of info to take in right off the bat. Pay attention to the prologue. That’s what sets up the series.



This book has an ending that is left open for the series, but not a cliffhanger ending. It’s more along the lines that the immediate danger surrounding Annie and Dean is resolved, and they get their HFN ending, BUT the main problem of who sold out his platoon is still hanging over their heads, and I’m assuming it’ll take all the guys working together again for this to be solved.



In true Monica McCarty fashion, this book has that band of brothers vibe we loved in her Highland Guard series, it has intense action, a missing platoon that had to go off-grid scattered around the world, and romance. You believe in Annie and Dean, and you want them to be together. With her brand of action and romance brought into the current century, you know this book will be amazing. And the cheeky ending left me with a smile on my face.

***ARC courtesy of Berkley

Perfect for fans of Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooters Inc and Tall, Dark and Dangerous books or Maya Banks KGI series books and featuring a strong, sassy, liberal, bleeding heart, idealist of a woman and a conservative, right winged, Texan alpha man.
Going Dark, the first in The Lost Platoon series, is a book that has everything I love in a great romantic suspense read.
You'll laugh, swoon and cry as you go on this thrilling adventure with characters whose banter will have you grinning when your hearts not racing from the adrenaline rush of reading the captivating tale.
Thank you to Netgalley for generously providing me with an arc of this delightful book. I look forward to reading more books in this action packed series

Very suspenseful story of military covert operations, mixed in with action, subterfuge, and oo-la-la steamy romantic scenes. At times the author lost me with all the details about guns, scuba equipment, and other military-related items that I am unfamiliar with. Did look up some things but having to stop made me lose momentum. Read practically every one of Monica McCarthy's books and looked forward to reading this one.

GOING DARK is both my first Monica McCarty book (I haven’t read a historical romance in over a decade) and her first foray into romantic suspense… and it will probably be my last. I nearly DNFed this book every day whilst reading it, but kept going because (1) I love Scotland and revisiting it was nice, and (2) I didn’t have more pressing books on my ARC review queue. Heroine Annie is the embodiment of TSTL, hero Dean is a complete wanker whose only saving grace is that he’s hot, the villain(s)’s motivations are not sufficiently fleshed out to be believable, thereby making what little plot there is feel like an unoriginal afterthought, and the editing… my God, the editing. I get that this is an ARC and that (hopefully) the bulk of the errors will be corrected prior to printing, but whoever’s in charge of early editing at Berkley’s romance division really needs to step up their game. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

**ARC courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Like most SEAL romantic suspense novels, the first chapter or so of Going Dark is a cram course in what it means to be a SEAL, their brutal training and the brotherhood that develops within the team. With that out of the way, I enjoyed the ensuing story. I willingly suspended my disbelief and went along for the ride. International political intrigue combined with adventure on the open sea with the hot boat captain kept me turning the pages. The plot was more involved than I expected going into it-- a nice surprise. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

This was my first Monica McCarthy contemporary and it did not disappoint. I've loved her historicals and was leery about switching to contemporary because I haven't had luck with that with past authors. But McCarthy's voice and writing shine through and I loved it. Hope she continues to write in both genres.

McCarty’s Lost Platoon series, which launches with Going Dark in September, has an interesting premise, and I’m looking forward seeing how the overarching mystery is resolved. I’ll bet she had a good time veering a totally different direction from her Scottish historicals.

SEAL Team Nine definitely faces extreme conditions in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway, a hundred feet below the surface in a submarine, with limited communication and flying under the radar of the Russians. When the mission goes FUBAR, it’s hard to tell who survives and who’s responsible for the melee. I had a hard time connecting with Dr. Annie Henderson, an academic who followed a man she’s known and dated for two months to Scotland to join the protest against exploratory drilling in the Hebrides. For an educated woman, she lacks ALL self-preservation instincts. But I did like Senior Chief Dean Baylor. His quiet investigation into what befell his team while balancing the messy situation Annie carries in her wake is a reminder of how important it is for our nation to have strong, intelligent soldiers keeping us safe.

I ended up DNFing this story. I was into it and then the hero was killed off. I enjoyed the secondary hero but the heroine just drove me nuts and by 50% I just couldn't take it anymore. The writing was good, I just feel the heroine and I were not a match.

If you have read her historical novels do not be afraid to try this modern suspense novel. You will see the same level of character development and plot twists. Additionally, if you are not a fan of historical fiction but enjoy SEAL tales and suspense you are in for a treat.