Review: "The Scenic Route" by Katie Ruggle

The Scenic Route by Katie Ruggle
Published July 2024 via Sourcebooks Casablanca
★★★★

Felicity's a bounty hunter, and she always gets her man. Bennett's a PI, and, well, he likes to get his man too. There's just one problem: at the moment, they're both after Felicity's mother.

I picked this up based on 1) the energy in Fish Out of Water, the other of Ruggle's books I've read, and 2) the promise of more into-the-woods plotline. On the latter point, the book disappoints (lots of small town but precious little into-the-woods—the cover's not particularly representative), but the energy is still there.

Honestly, this is the sort of book that should make me grumpy for its lack of realism. Felicity and her sisters are part of a bounty-hunting crew, supposedly reserved and basically friendless—but Felicity is also ready to trust Bennett more or less right off the bat, and tell just about everyone she meets that she's a bounty hunter, and I...can't imagine that this is really the best way to go about getting your mark and also not get killed? It should make me very annoyed. It does—a little. But I also flew through the book with surprisingly few qualms. I think I just like that Felicity and Bennett are on pretty equal footing, all things considered, and Felicity in particular is confident in her skills and happy with who she is; although they're both guarded to a certain degree, neither of them needs the other to tell them that they're good at their job or that they're lovable.

I'm not going to go out of my way to read the rest of the connected books, but...I might check to see whether Ruggle has any other into-the-woods books. Just in case. And I'm making another mental note to reread Fish Out of Water one of these days.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.