Monday, November 27, 2017

Review: Accidental SEAL (SEAL Brotherhood #1) by Sharon Hamilton

Accidental SEAL by Sharon Hamilton

Accidental SEAL (SEAL Brotherhood #1) by Sharon Hamilton
Purchase link: Amazon

My rating: Small star Small star

Heat rating: Flame  Flame  Flame

Accidental SEAL by Sharon Hamilton blurb

I'm not entirely certain why there is so much hype surrounding this series and Ms Hamilton because after getting through this book, I don't get it. This is probably the corniest, most cringe-worthy non-suspenseful romantic suspense I have ever read / listened to. The plot meanders all over the place and the pacing is so slow, I want to yell at it to hurry the heck up. The descriptions border on purple and it's full of rhetoric. Different characters would often go off on a tangent and wax lyrical about some topic or other and I'd be wondering, why are we being given all this unnecessary information? Given all that, I still didn't hate it. At some points, it was oddly riveting and I was confused why I was enjoying it. Also, bonus points for the use of the word "peach" (more on that later) which provided my Steve and I endless laughter and hilarity.

I picked this up as an audiobook because I do love a romantic suspense in audiobooks. I'm picky when it comes to audiobooks. I pretty much like only romantic suspense, some paranormal, maybe urban fantasy, but that's it. Romantic suspense is a favorite. This book ticked all the boxes. Romantic suspense, first in a series, narrated by a male narrator whose voice I quite enjoy. I think if I had not been listening, I would have lost patience a lot quicker. J D Hart is a decent narrator. I was not crazy about his voice for Kyle, the hero but I loved what he did with some kind of voice modifier thingmajiggy when he did voices for phone calls, TV newscasters and any other voice which came through a mechanical or digital device. It was very cool.

As for the characters, Kyle and Christie are rather one dimensional. Christie is the sappiest, clingiest, neediest, mopiest heroine with a rather healthy sexual appetite I've ever come across. She is rather without shame when it comes to throwing herself at Kyle. I have no problem with a heroine who is in touch with her own sexuality but Christie comes across as rather desperate and she uses the sex to try to keep Kyle interested. Fortunately for her, when Kyle is around her, he seems to be thinking only with his little head.  I feel somewhat sorry for her because by the time you get to about 65% of the book, Kyle has dumped her three times "for her own good" because he is trying to protect her from the bad guys. Even after being dumped though, she drives around town, frequenting places they had been to previously, hoping to catch a glimpse of Kyle. She really needed to grow a backbone and say, enough is enough. He should be crawling back to her begging for forgiveness and she should not be quite so quick to forgive. She really needs to make him work for it a bit more. And of course, the infamous peach. Early on in the story, Christie is thinking about Kyle and "her peach quivered with anticipation ..." WTH? Peach? Really? You couldn't find a better word for describe that part of her anatomy, you had to use a fruit reference? And not just once but several times. My Steve and I were listening to this in the car and that stopped us in our tracks. We were so incredulous as to what we had just heard, we had to pause it, rewind and listen again to make certain we heard right. Yeah, we did! I really should thank Ms Hamilton for the peach reference. Steve and I have been having so much fun with the word. We were watching TV the other night and Steve turns to me and asks "do you think her peach is quivering?" :-D I've been getting quivering peach comments from Steve frequently since hearing it in the audiobook. :-)

Kyle is probably the team leader of the guys in this story for SEAL Team III. I gotta say, for a team leader, Kyle does not show a great deal of leadership and is not very action oriented. There's so much sit around and wait going on, I got rather impatient at times. I would have liked to see Kyle's character drive the suspense and action element of the story forward but he doesn't. He seems rather passive for an alpha male SEAL to me and he keeps getting distracted by thoughts of Christie, so much so that his other team members call him on it. The first two times he dumps Christie to protect her from the dangerous stuff he's into, I get it. By the third time, I'm thinking it was just a little too much. Poor Christie. It's a good thing for him Christie keep obsessing over him and his well formed forearms. :-p I really would have liked to see Kyle really show the leadership he's supposed to have and exhibit a lot more problem solving ability. Don't SEALs get trained to think independently and solve problems in situations where they have no back up and no support? The action did get a little bit better towards the end and I really enjoyed the scene where Kyle and Armando took out the bad guys. Very kick a**!!

Overall, it's been an oddly riveting if frustrating book. I liked it well enough to finish it and even picked up the second book in the series (it was on sale for 99c) to listen to as well. I'm hoping Ms Hamilton's writing improves with each passing book since there are so many in the series already. Plus, I quite like J D Hart as a narrator, so I want to keep listening.

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About the author

Sharon Hamilton

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2 comments:

  1. Yikes!!! Peach!!!! No wonder you're still laughing!

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    Replies
    1. All my years of reading romance, my first time seeing it called a peach.

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