DISTURBING HIS PEACE – Tessa Bailey
The Academy Series -Book 3
Harper Collins
Digital ISBN-13:  978-0-06-246713-3 
May 2018
Romantic Comedy

New York City, New York

Danika Silva is nearing the end of the training in the police academy, and woefully trying to ignore Lieutenant Greer Burns, one of the instructors.  It's not fair that she's the only one that hears the ground rumbling when he walks in the gymnasium.  Her favorite part of the day is the five seconds as he's putting his whistle in his mouth for inspection and stares at Danika.  Lieutenant Burn's brother Charlie is one of Danika's roommates, but it is evident they aren't very close, and in fact, Greer holds himself away from almost everybody.  Danika is the family fixer, and when a younger cousin calls and tells her some boys from high school are going to rob him at work, she rushes down without calling the police and gets taken to the station herself.  Greer thinks she needs some probation time riding along with him to teach her the error of her ways.

Several years ago, Greer's partner was killed on duty, and when he was younger his mother left him and his younger brother Charlie without ever contacting them again.  Years later he found her address in some papers of his father and went to her home, and saw she had an entirely new family and didn't even recognize him as he walked up to her.  Too much pain in his life has Greer trying to keep from getting close to people and he lives a very strict and lonely life.  And then he met the irrepressible Danika the first day of the academy and hasn't been able to forget her smart mouth ever since.

Greer struggles to keep himself away from Danika, and when he can't, he struggles with the feelings of peace and love he feels with her.  But when his fear grows too great he feels he must break up with Danika, it is her exercise in the Maze at the Academy that helps him realize that for Danika to be what she wants, he must let her do what she does best because she does the same for him. 

Secondary characters are Danika's roommates Charlie, Greer's little brother, and Jack, her childhood friend who is also an alcoholic, and after finding love has been trying to make up for everything he blew off in the Academy training the past months.

DISTURBING THE PEACE is the final book in the Academy series, after INDECENT EXPOSURE (January 2018) and DISORDERLY CONDUCT (August 2017) featuring Danika's other two roommates.  Danika and Greer are two characters who like things done their own way, and Danika is no hothouse flower when it comes to getting her own way.  Their hard-edged relationship as they struggle towards love will have you rooting for them to come to terms with Greer's fear of losing Danika to violence.  Don't mind those couple of tears you shed, because DISTURBING THE PEACE is totally worth each one.

Carolyn Crisher