REVIEW: Collateral Damage – Miski Harris

Collateral Damage Book Cover Collateral Damage
Don't Ask, Don't Tell Book 2
Miski Harris
MM Multicultural Paranormal Romance
Independently Published
March 14, 2020
141

Life has a way of turning your world upside down. Just when you think you’re away from the eye of the storm you find you were never really the central target but instead, the aftermath of the physical and emotional destruction.

Jordan’s life was full of losses. He lost his friend EJ when he disappeared during a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell debacle. He lost his livelihood after career ending injuries during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He returned home to find he’s also lost his life partner Michael, and while traveling to receive intense treatment of his PTSD, he suffered yet another catastrophic loss. He’s angry and depressed. What else could life take from him?

Ron has led a solitary life in the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado. He trains service dogs to meet the needs of clients suffering extreme anxiety driven illnesses. For this reason, he has a stellar reputation and relationship with the military serving war torn veterans. He knows there is something missing and he’s sure it’s not love because, well, been there, done that…

As life brings Ron and Jordan together, will they each have what the other needs to weather the storms of life? Or, will each man continue to wander through the detritus of fate, nothing more than collateral damage.

Reviewed by Linda Tonis

Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team

Jordan Washington was part of the combat search and rescue but he had one injury too many and the last one sent him home. He had already lost his friend EJ when he got caught up in the don’t ask, don’t tell fiasco and when he arrived home he discovered that his partner Michael was also gone, dead at the hands of a hit and run driver.

 

Alone and suffering mentally he decides to go for help, unfortunately mental health care at the VA has a mile long waiting list and so at the advice of his old commander he goes to Changes, a place where he can get the help he needs. Dr. Dale Chenault would be in charge of his care only there was one small problem, Dale Chenault is married to Jordan’s lost friend EJ. Seeing EJ brings about bad memories and his first meeting ended with him punching out his old friend. EJ never checked up on him, never wrote to tell him what was going on in his life but Jordan began to realize that EJ had lived through his own nightmare.

 

Jordan stayed for a few months undergoing counseling, group therapy and having his medication adjusted. He left to go to Colorado for the help he now needed with counselor, Ron Cochran the owner of Pawz with a Cause providing service animals with specialized talents for patients in need. Ron has already chosen a dog for Jordan but life wasn’t finished with Jordan because while parked at a truck stop another truck crashed into him and he found himself in a hospital and not at Ron Cochran’s.

 

This injury left him with an amputated leg and you wonder just how much any human can endure. He, like so many others, joins the military to protect our country and sometimes the enemy is the very men standing next to them. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell wounded so many men and women, wounds that broke hearts and were every bit as painful as any wound the enemy could inflict.

 

I loved watching how Ron and Jordan connected with each other, and it was not a connection without its share of problems. DeeJay, the beautiful white shepherd assigned to Jordan was such a wonder as I am sure all these therapy animals are. The support each of these veterans gave each other was wonderful, sometimes they have no one else to catch them when they fall except others like themselves.

 

A beautiful story of courage and fighting back when everything seems to be against you.

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