'Cut & Run' by Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux

Cut & Run

Author: Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux

Rating: D-

Vibe: Discount FBI procedural meets enemies-to-lovers romance with the investigative skills of a drunk toddler

I finished this book and immediately started cackling. Not because it was funny—though unintentionally, it absolutely was—but because I couldn't believe what I'd just read. Cut & Run is so spectacularly, impressively bad that I found myself almost admiring the sheer audacity of it all.

Let me set the scene. I love murder mysteries. I've devoured everything from Agatha Christie to Gillian Flynn, from cozy British villages to Scandinavian serial killers. I live for a good whodunit. So when I picked up this M/M romance about FBI agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett solving crimes while falling in love, I was genuinely excited.

What I got was possibly the dumbest mystery I've ever encountered.

The plot follows two mismatched agents forced to partner up—Ty's the loose cannon, Zane's the recovering alcoholic with a tragic past. They're investigating murders while navigating their enemies-to-lovers arc. Standard stuff, except the FBI in this universe apparently operates like it's run by hyperactive twelve-year-olds who learned about law enforcement from CSI: Miami reruns.

These two just wander around completely unsupervised, getting into literal fistfights with each other and then being going about their business. I started genuinely wondering if the authors had ever seen a police procedural or just assumed federal agents work like freelance private eyes with badges. The confidence! The absolute fearlessness of writing about something with what appears to be zero research! I aspire to have that kind of hubris.

But the mystery itself—oh god, the mystery. I've read hundreds of murder mysteries, and this one telegraphed its solution so hard I thought it had to be brilliant misdirection. The killer was so obvious from chapter two that I kept waiting for the clever twist. Surely they wouldn't make it this transparent. Surely there's a reason they're being this heavy-handed.

There wasn't.

When the big reveal happened, I actually burst out laughing. It's like they took every "Mystery Writing 101: What NOT to Do" rule and used it as their instruction manual. The murderer couldn't have been more obvious if they'd worn a name tag saying "Hi, I'm Your Killer."

Then there's the addiction storyline, which operates under the revolutionary medical theory that love cures alcoholism. Groundbreaking! Also, most relationship counselors probably wouldn't recommend multiple physical altercations as foreplay, but what do I know about romance?

The dialogue reads like it was written by someone who learned about gay men from a weekend bachelorette party in WeHo and thought they'd cracked the code. The sex scenes are so inauthentic, it’s almost comical.

Sure, Ty and Zane have moments of decent chemistry, but that's like complimenting the appetizers at a restaurant that gave you food poisoning. It doesn't really matter at that point.

By the end, I was genuinely fascinated by how confidently terrible it all was. This book is like The Room of M/M romance—so bad it becomes almost entertaining in its complete commitment to being ridiculous. Will the FBI continue operating like a community theater group? Will the obvious suspect become even MORE obvious? The suspense was genuinely killing me.

When I finished this book, all I could do was shake my head and marvel at the experience. Look, I never want to yuck anyone's yum, but there are nine books in this series, so clearly there's an audience for this type of thing—it's just not me.

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