Some Kind of Hero by Suzanne Brockmann (Troubleshooters #17)
Released: July 11, 2017
Romantic Suspense
Ballantine Books
Reviewed by Tracey
Blurb: Navy men don’t come tougher than Lieutenant Peter Greene. Every day he whips hotshot SEAL wannabes into elite fighters. So why can’t he handle one fifteen-year-old girl? His ex’s death left him a single dad overnight, and very unprepared. Though he can’t relate to an angsty teen, he can at least keep Maddie safe—until the day she disappears. Though Pete’s lacking in fatherly intuition, his instinct for detecting danger is razor sharp. Maddie’s in trouble. Now he needs the Troubleshooters team at his back, along with an unconventional ally.
Romance writer Shayla Whitman never expected to be drawn into a real-world thriller—or to meet a hero who makes her pulse pound. Action on the page is one thing. Actually living it is another story. Shay’s not as bold as her heroines, but she’s a mother. She sees the panic in her new neighbor’s usually fearless blue eyes—and knows there’s no greater terror for a parent than having a child at risk. It’s an ordeal Shay won’t let Pete face alone. She’s no highly trained operative, but she’s smart, resourceful, and knows what makes teenagers tick.
Still, working alongside Pete has its own perils—like letting the heat between them rise out of control. Intimate emotions could mean dangerous, even deadly, consequences for their mission. No matter what, they must be on top of their game, and playing for keeps . . . or else Pete’s daughter may be gone for good.
The Troubleshooters series has been off my radar for quite a few years. I read some early on, and I liked them. Then, for some reason or another, probably just life, I lost track of the series. Thankfully, this book works really well as a stand alone. There were some characters that you could tell were reoccurring, but it didn’t detract from the book at all. This is definitely a romantic suspense book and the action starts from the first page. It took a little bit to get the start of the story straight, because the action started so quickly. Shayla picks up her hot navy seal neighbor as he is flagging down cars from the side of the road. His 15 year old daughter has been missing, and he saw her get into a car, so he jumps in with Shayla to run them down. The action starts right there and never really stops. They don’t find his daughter, Maddie, so Shayla and Pete stay together and try to track her down. Shayla is the mother of two teenagers, so she is in a better place to understand his daughter’s frame of mind, because Pete is at a loss with the teenager. Maddie’s mother had recently died, and she had only been staying with her father for a few weeks. Plus, Shayla has been jonesing on the new neighbor from her window, and she is sure he is just too good to be true.
The characterization was very well done, and the plot development was good. Like some romantic suspense, a little suspension of belief is needed, but not enough to ruin the story. . Shayla is a kind, sweet, smart and loyal woman, she is even happily divorced and friendly with her ex. She writes romance book, and is facing a long period of writer’s block. She has a male character who speaks to her in her head, which becomes somewhat irritating and I think this plot device needed to be dropped from the story. We all have a little person in our head that talks to us at times, but having the heroine answer out loud is rather distracting and makes her look a little stupid, which Shayla is anything but.
Pete is just an overall great guy. He has every characteristic you would want for a HEA hero. He treats Shayla like a woman he actually LIKES, not like she’s just a hot little number. He respects what she does for a living, and starts immediately reading one of her books. Shayla keeps waiting for him to have the wrong reaction to his daughter, and to prove to her that he isn’t such a great person, but it never happens. Even the story of how Maddie came to be born, and how he lost touch with her makes him out to be something special. This backstory is told in story form Shayla thinks that if Maddie learns how Pete and Maddie’s mother, Lisa, came to have a relationship and have a baby, she might at least listen to her father. So Pete tells the story to Shayla, and she writes the story to email to Maddie. This is a great plot device that show’s Maddie that her father isn’t the ogre that she imagines him to be. Maddie is grief stricken, angry, and estranged from her father, and Pete, the poor guy, is just clueless. Pete hadn’t had a relationship since Maddie’s mother, so he’d been relatively alone for 15 years.
…it had been too damn long since someone who cared about him–truly, honestly cared–had put their arms around him. It had shocked him–just how much he’d missed something that he hadn’t even really known that he’d been denied.
And, I love, love what Pete tells Shayla’s son.
“Don’t get me wrong. Your mother’s beautiful, but…That brain, that amazing mind inside of her brilliant head… That’s what you look for in a woman.” He glanced at Tevin. “In a person.”
The action just keeps rolling along through the story. There are bad guys, drug deals, breaking and entering, guns and car chases involved. The insta-love between Pete and Shayla happens over just a five or six day period. I’m not crazy about the instant sex and love trope, I like a little sexual tension that builds up over time, but this one works better than most. There is a very good sex scene set in the garage, where they set out to prove a scene from one of her books isn’t possible. I just kept thinking they were Myth Busting sex.
“And I recognize that it might sound crazy for me to say that I’m going to marry you, four days after we met, but I am gonna marry you. Maybe not right away, because our kids might not want to get all Brady Bunched. But I’m okay with long-term plans, and I’m thinking in three years, after we get Frank and Maddie safely off to college, we’ll do it.”
The only issue I had with this, and it kept springing to mind while reading, is….who the hell is interested in sex when your child is missing? Yes, I know…it’s a book. Yes, I know…suspend belief. But this issue just kept popping into my head while reading. Did I enjoy the book any less…no, but it did keep coming to mind.
Favorite quote:
“You’d make a great SEAL,” he told her
Shayla snorted. “Yeah, except for the part where I can’t run very fast, my swimming is limited to the dog paddle, I hate the cold, and oh, yeah, I’m afraid of literally everything.”
And, there’s another favorite quote. It’s when danger is circling both Pete and Shayla, and Pete pulls the..I’m a big SEAL, so I’m going to tell you what to do. Shayla’s response is great!
“Hot tip,” she told him. “Authoritarian language is not a turn-on.. I will go somewhere safe, you will not put me there.”
One sideline story running through the book was an interesting history lesson about the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Maddie’s grandmother and her family had been held in a camp, and I was very glad to learn more about this subject. The sins of war are often left to disappear into history, and it was a pleasant surprise to get a really thought provoking lesson about our country’s past. Brockmann did a good job with this and never got preachy or lecturing about the subject.
There is great humor and chemistry in this book. It is a fun, engaging read, and it does make me want to go take a look at Brockmann’s backlist, see what the other Troubleshooter’s stories are like. The characters which make an appearance from her other books seemed pretty interesting and worth investigating. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in strong, fierce women, hot navy SEALS and action which never slows down.
Grade: B
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