Come for the story, stay for the bad ass arthritic lesbian godmother.
Plot: Following immediately from the events of Whiteout, the first in this series, Leo, the team’s pilot, has been tasked with finding a man said to be holding onto another sample of the virus. The person she finds is definitely not that guy, but her best trail to him. Also her only chance of surviving the Alaska wilderness with a private army on their tail. Shenanigans ensue.
Like the first in the series, Uncharted also has a feisty woman who is capable and smart but entirely out of her depth being dependent on a taciturn but profoundly lonely outdoorsy man forced to work together to survive a frozen wilderness as they fall in love and learn to trust again against the backdrop of a deathly pursuit by a dangerous and unstable man.
If that sounds like a LOT of similarities, that’s because there are a LOT of similarities. The other problem here is that the similarities shine a very bright light on how much stronger the first book is. The journey is more harrowing, the villain more developed and interesting, the couple more believable, and with a lot more overarching plot.
I think everyone has a sweetness threshold in romance. Something that is callous to one reader can come across as gently sweet to another, something sweet to one might come across as saccharine and gross to another. I have a very high tolerance to sweetness. This book was on the wrong side to me. If you have a very high tolerance, you may find otherwise. Leo and Elias fall for each other about as hard and as fast as teenagers and this will either work for you or it won’t.
But Elias’ godmother is a goddamn gem and you should read this book just for her.