This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Jess. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.
The summary:
Former Marine sniper Seth Harlan is determined to prove that he can still do his job despite his ongoing battle with PTSD. When an old friend contacts HORNET to rescue a black ops soldier, Seth’s stability is strained. He knows all too well what it’s like to rot inside an enemy camp, praying for rescue and waiting for death. And he’s not about to leave a man behind.
Photojournalist Phoebe Leighton just stumbled into the middle of an arms deal. Teaming up with a ragtag team of mercenaries is the last thing she wants to do–especially when she realizes Seth Harlan is assigned to the mission. He may ignite a passion in her she thought long dead, but Phoebe’s hiding a secret that could destroy him.
With a bomb in the mix, HORNET’s mission is suddenly about a lot more than an abandoned soldier. Racing against the clock, Seth, Phoebe, and the rest of the team struggle to stop a ruthless warlord bent on power, revenge…and death.
Here is Jess's review:
Okay, let me start with a disclaimer: I’m in the military. I can’t read most military-themed romantic suspense novels, for two reasons: either they’re appallingly inaccurate, and/or they feature helpless women who endanger the heroes through their incompetence.
This is one of the first military romances I’ve really enjoyed.
Although there’s a strong and action-packed plot, the central conflict of this story is Seth’s PTSD. He lost his team, then was captured by the Taliban and brutally tortured for fifteen months, and nothing about this is glossed over. The PTSD is a near-crippling affliction that affects every interaction and thought he has. He’s aware that it makes him act irrational, and his inability to control it causes him to feel that he’s ruined beyond repair. Every good moment he has—a smile, a touch, a moment of peace—is such a powerful victory that I found myself unable to stop reading, just because I wanted to see him take another step toward wholeness. Honestly, I don’t remember rooting so hard for a hero’s recovery since the Duke of Jervaulx in Flowers for the Storm ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ).
While Seth is fighting a grim battle every day, Phoebe is his complete opposite. Although she has things in her past that she deeply regrets, she has moved beyond them and is doing something she deeply believes in: working as a photojournalist to advance women’s rights around the world. (This is a cause I can get on board with!) She believes in the power of the press and the future of Afghanistan—which couldn’t be more different from the paranoid veterans of the HORNET team. She’s the type of fearless civilian volunteer who will walk openly into a village that the military wouldn’t touch without air support and armored vehicles, and befriend the locals because she treats them like people. I also related to the way Phoebe embraces the Afghan headscarf because it covers her frizzy hair!
I found myself dog-earing a lot of pages. The interactions between Phoebe and Seth were emotionally intense and well-written:
She wanted to comfort him, but when she reached out, he shied away.
“Don’t touch me,” he said in a strangled voice that didn’t sound like his own. He held up a hand as if to ward her off.
“Okay. I’m sorry.” Phoebe wrapped her arms around herself. Blood seeped from her reopened bullet wound, making her shirt stick to her arm. She ignored it. “You had a nightmare.”
“I fucking know that.”
She recoiled at the venom in his tone. “Are . . . you okay?”
He laughed. It was a nasty sound. “I’ll never be okay again.”
Oh, damn. Heat stung her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she repeated because she didn’t know what else to say.
His gaze snapped to hers and she thought she saw a hint of softening in the icy blue. At least his eyes didn’t belong to a wild animal anymore.“No.” Sighing, he rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a legit, polite question you ask a person who has woken up from a bad nightmare. I’m just a bastard who doesn’t know how to carry on a civil conversation anymore. I apologize.”
The other thing I appreciated was that Phoebe is in touch with her sexuality. Seth isn’t sure he’s either capable or worthy of being with another woman—his former fiancée left him while he was captured—and she does a wonderful job of bringing him out of his self-imposed isolation.
Every cell in his being focused on the feel of Phoebe’s hand, so small in his. Seemingly fragile, but he knew better. She was strong, probably even stronger than him. Nothing could break her, and with that knowledge came a strange sense of peace. There was no way he could damage this woman or corrupt her with his darkness. And maybe . . .
Was it possible that the unbreakable had the ability to fix the broken?
And later . . .
“I’m disfigured. Scarred.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered.
He stared at her in silence for so long, embarrassment warmed her cheeks.
“You’re . . .” He seemed to search for the right word, but came up empty and shook his head. “How can you have so much compassion? Isn’t it exhausting caring so much?”
“Not as exhausting as pretending not to care about anything.”
Seth isn’t the only one with problems. The whole HORNET team is deeply dysfunctional. In addition to the traumatized Seth, the team leader has a crippled foot from an old injury, the second-in-command has a traumatic brain injury, and the bomb disposal expert is emotionally scarred to such an extent that he acts like a jerk to everyone, all the time.
Honestly, it was hard to see how these guys were going to be able to carry out the mission, but several of them got meaningful character development over the course of the story.
The Afghan setting is well researched, and Burrows gives the nod to several real-world people and events. The 2014 presidential elections are a major plot element. There were a couple of things that made me go, “Wait, what?” (The team goes into a major operation without any communication devices, and an Afghan warlord somehow manages to call in an airstrike.) But in general, the details were good enough that I could enjoy the story without being distracted by little inaccuracies.
Readers who dislike brutal violence may not enjoy this one too much. The author doesn’t pull any punches; this book deals with torture and its effects, and the villains are ruthless and sadistic. The action is decent, but for me the greatest tension lay in Seth’s struggle to escape what was done to him–and the resolution was very satisfying.
There weren’t many things I didn’t like about this book. The only reason I gave it an A minus was that it had a LOT of plot threads and characters, and I felt that several of them didn’t get resolved or fully justify their presence in the book. It seems like the author is setting up several more books, though, so presumably the other team members (and the mysterious millionaire mercenary who shows up 75% of the way through) will each get their story.
In summary, this was one of the best modern military romantic suspense novels I’ve read. I would recommend it to fans of gritty, character-driven romantic suspense, and I’ll probably read the other books in the series too.
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What a great review. It makes me wish I could handle reading violence, because I really like a well done romance about recovering from trauma. But I’ll just have to take satisfaction from knowing that this book exists.
I hope you go back and read the first book, Seal of Honor, featuring the leader of HORNET. It’s great too, IMO. I didn’t like the third book much but it’s still worth reading.