Tag: Troubleshooters Series

Review: Some Kind of Hero by Suzanne Brockmann

Posted July 13, 2017 by Rowena in Reviews | 0 Comments

Review: Some Kind of Hero by Suzanne BrockmannReviewer: Rowena
Some Kind of Hero by Suzanne Brockmann
Series: Troubleshooters Series #17
Also in this series: Into the Storm
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 11th 2017
Genres: Romantic Suspense
Pages: 448
Add It: Goodreads
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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.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Troubleshooters book by Suzanne Brockmann so I was pretty excited to jump back into this world. I was hoping to catch up with all of the previous couples and there are quite a few of them around in Some Kind of Hero but to be honest, I miss the guys from the beginning of the series.

I miss Sam Starrett and Johnny Nilsson, though I don’t miss Nilsson’s wife Meg. I also miss Wildcard and Cosmo and just…those guys. They’ve all moved on from the Navy but for me, they were the guys that I loved so much that I kept coming back for more. I like the new guys fine but they just don’t compare to the older guys. My guys.

Anyway, on with the review…

Some Kind of Hero follows Lietenant Peter Greene and Shayla Whitman. Peter’s daughter has gone missing and Shayla gets roped into helping him by being at the right place when Peter needed a helping hand. Peter’s daughter Maddie gets herself wrapped up in some bad business and because she has no relationship with her Navy SEAL father, she doesn’t turn to him for help. She decides that she can handle taking on a drug lord all by her teenage self. sigh Too many times I wanted to punch Maddie in the throat for being so stupid.

Anyway, so Peter and Shayla are trying to track Maddie down because she’s missing and they’re piecing together what happened throughout the book with the help of Peter’s SEAL buddies Izzy Zanella, Mark Jenkins and a whole bunch of newbies that are all named John. It really takes a village to raise a child or in this case, find a missing child and the more I read, the more I got frustrated with a bunch of things.

  • Maddie. When the only person you have left in the world is your father, someone who has bent over backward trying to fix your broken relationship and is a Navy freaking SEAL, you turn to him for help when you’re framed for stealing money from a drug lord. You don’t lie and make things so much worse by running away and putting those that are trying to help you in danger by not being upfront about everything. I was also not cool with the way that she kept throwing her underage self at Dingo who was trying so hard to do the right thing by keeping his distance at the same time that he was trying to help protect her from the bad guys. Maddie annoyed the shit out of me at every turn in this book. I never quite warmed up to her and that sucked.
  • Shayla’s internal dialogue she had with Harry. It’s one thing to talk to yourself in your head or to even have conversations with your made up character in your head but the amount of times that Shayla shushed Harry out loud made me roll my eyes all over the damn place. I wanted to shake Shayla and tell her to stop acting like fucking weirdo, especially cause I thought she was too old to be acting the way that she was.
  • The earthquake. As someone who grew up in Southern California and is used to the earthquakes that we have down here, the whole earthquake scene just didn’t feel authentic to me. Peter did entirely too much and the earth shook for too long and I was reading that scene like, nope…that wouldn’t happen, there’s not enough time for all of this to happen. We’ve never had an earthquake that long and sure it’s all explained away but nope, I didn’t buy it.

There are more things that I was frustrated with but those were the main ones. I wasn’t a big fan of the romance between Peter and Shayla because they were too old to act the way they were acting. The whole “OMG, does he like me? I’m so stupid. Why did I say that?” Ugh, seriously? You guys aren’t 16 and in high school, so stop acting like you are. You’re a freaking Navy SEAL, Peter…open your mouth and tell Shayla how you feel about her. Same with Shayla. She wrote romance novels for a living for crying out loud. If you can write steamy love scenes and dialogue featuring a whole lot of “I love you’s” than you should be able to tell the man that you love how you feel and stop dodging what was really going on between you two.

I will say that even though there were things that annoyed me, I still enjoyed being in the Troubleshooters world again. It was good to see Izzy and Eden again and to hear about Lopez and Jenk and everybody else that was brought up in this book. Izzy is my favorite hero of the newer generation of SEALs so I loved, loved, loved seeing him again. I love his personality and he hasn’t changed a bit since his book. He’s still freaking awesome.

Overall, the romance kind of fell flat for me and the heroine got on my nerves with her inner dialogue crap and the earthquake didn’t feel right to me at all but I loved seeing the SEAL team come together and be there for one of their own. I loved how they juggled their jobs on the base with being there for Peter and helping out any way that they can. I loved hearing the Navy slang again and even though this isn’t my favorite book in the series, it’s still good.

Grade: 3 out of 5

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Review: Into the Storm by Suzanne Brockmann

Posted September 15, 2015 by Rowena in Reviews | 0 Comments

Review: Into the Storm by Suzanne BrockmannReviewer: Rowena
Into the Storm by Suzanne Brockmann
Series: Troubleshooters #10
Also in this series: All Through the Night, Over the Edge

Publication Date: August 15th 2006
Genres: Suspense
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars
Series Rating: five-stars

In a remote, frozen corner of New Hampshire, a Navy SEAL team and the elite security experts of Troubleshooters Incorporated are going head-to-head as fierce but friendly rivals in a raid-and-rescue training exercise. Despite the frigid winter temperatures, tension smolders between SEAL Petty Officer Mark Jenkins and former cop turned Troubleshooter Lindsey Fontaine after an impulsive night of passion goes awry. And then suddenly Tracy Shapiro, the Troubleshooters' new receptionist, vanishes while playing the role of hostage during a mock rescue operation.

Teaming up with the FBI to launch a manhunt in the treacherous wilderness, Jenk and Lindsey must put aside their feelings as a record snowstorm approaches, dramatically reducing any hope of finding Tracy alive. The trail is colder than the biting New England climate until a lucky break leads to a horrifying discovery - a brutally murdered young woman wearing the jacket Tracy wore when she disappeared. Suddenly there is a chilling certainty that Tracy has fallen prey to a serial killer - one who knows the backwoods terrain and who doesn't play by the rules of engagement.

In a race against time, a raging blizzard, and a cunning opponent, Jenk and Lindsey are put to the ultimate test. Risking everything, they must finally come together in a desperate attempt to save Tracy - and each other.

Mark Jenkins and Lindsey Fontaine. I remember this book fondly but what’s weird is that I remember mostly that I loved the heck out of Izzy Zanella in this book. Ha! Poor Jenkins.

Anyway, SEAL Team Sixteen and the Troubleshooters Inc. folks are going head to head in a mock training exercise. Competition is fierce and both sides want to win but when their fake hostage Tracy Shapiro goes missing, their friendly competitive training operation gets thrown to the wayside because…shit gets real.

Jenkins and Lindsey are battling wits and feelings after an unexpected night together but Lindsey is adamant about shutting that shit down. She wants nothing to do with a relationship and what should have been a whole lot of sexual tension, was actually bogged down with too much shit that I wanted to beat out of Lindsey.

This wasn’t my favorite book in the Troubleshooters series but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. There’s a whole bunch of Troubleshooters goodness in the form of seeing everyone from the team (old and new) and I really liked seeing what everyone was up to.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I still felt like Jenks was jipped because it was Izzy that stole the story for me. Completely stole Jenk’s thunder. I was much more interested in what he was up to and even though I know who he ends up with, I still low key wanted him to hook up with Tracy.

Lindsey bickered her way through this story and at first, Jenk just kind took it with his tail between his legs and it drove me crazy because I wanted him to be more like Sam and Wildcard and freaking fight her back but I never felt like that was Jenk’s style, which is probably why he’s not one of my favorite Troubleshooters series. Lindsey got on my nerves a lot but in the end, I believed in her feelings for Jenk and I was glad that they got their shit together long enough to own up to their feelings for each other. Jenk came a long way in this book and I liked him a lot better in the end.

My favorite part of this book was seeing everyone again. The older characters meeting up with the new characters and all banding together to fight the bad guys. I want more of this. I miss these guys. Still, solid book for me.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Ballantine. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.

four-stars

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Review: Breaking the Rules by Suzanne Brockmann

Posted March 6, 2014 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Breaking the Rules
Rowena’s review of Breaking the Rules (Troubleshooters #16) by Suzanne Brockmann.

Izzy Zanella wasn’t looking for another reason to butt heads with his Navy SEAL teammate, and nemesis, Danny Gillman. But then he met Danny’s beautiful younger sister, Eden. When she needed it most, he offered her a place to stay, a shoulder to cry on – and more. And when she got pregnant with another man’s child, he offered her marriage. But Eden’s devastating miscarriage shattered their life together – and made the intense bad blood between Izzy and Danny even worse.

Now Eden’s back, and she’s on a mission to rescue her teen brother, Ben, from their abusive step-father. Even if she and Izzy can prove that their broken marriage is still in one piece, winning legal custody of Ben is a long shot. But they’re not alone: Danny and his girlfriend, Jenn, offer to help, and he and Izzy agree to bury the past and fight for Ben’s future.

As they plan their strategy, Izzy and Eden grapple with raw passion that still crackles between them – while Danny and Jenn confront new depths in their own rocky relationship. But events take a terrifying turn after Ben befriends a girl fleeing from a child prostitution ring. When the young runaway seeks refuge with Eden and Izzy, her pursuers kidnap Ben – and a deadly standoff begins. Now they must all pull together like never before and strike back, swift and hard, to protect their unconventional little family and everything they hold most precious.

This was my first read from my TBR jar. I can’t believe that I’ve had this book since the day that it came out and never got around to reading it until now. I started it once before and couldn’t get into it so I put it down, thinking that I’d try again in a week or so…I didn’t know that it’d be longer than two years before I picked it back up again.

I was also surprised that I really liked it. Man, I was trippin’ when I couldn’t get into it before because reading this book, took me back to how much I loved the other books in the Troubleshooters series.

So Izzy and Eden have been married for a while now but they don’t have a normal marriage. They got married because Eden was pregnant and Izzy offered support. He offered her his friendship and a shoulder to lean on so Eden took it. When she lost the baby, she didn’t take the news well because she turned Izzy’s world upside down but leaving him behind. Now she’s back in the states, trying to save her younger brother, Ben from their homophobic stepfather. Ben is being abused and Eden will do whatever it takes to get him out from under their stepdad’s thumb.

It’s not long before Eden realizes that she can’t do this alone. She needs help. She needs her brother Danny’s help but when he’s unable to get to her in time, she accepts Izzy’s help.

So much is going on in this book and I ate everything up. From Danny and Jenn’s dysfunctional relationship, to trying to save Ben and Ben’s new friend Neesha, not to mention Izzy and Eden’s reconnection, there was a lot to carry this story and I thought Brockmann handled it really well. She delivered on keeping things interesting and when I closed the book, I wasn’t in any way disappointed with the story.

Brockmann does what I thought was impossible. She made me like Danny Gillman. My opinion of him dropped considerably in the previous couple of books because of the way that he treated the women in his life. And of the shithead way he treated Izzy at every turn. He was Danny the Dick to me. I couldn’t stand his attitude but seeing him brought to his knees in this book went a long way in fixing my feelings for him. At the beginning of the book, all hope was lost of me ever liking him but I should have had more faith in Brockmann because she made him see the error of his ways and I was glad for it. Seeing him fix things with both Jennilyn and Eden made me happy.

I read reviews of this book a long time ago and there were a lot of people who were disappointed with Eden’s character. They didn’t connect with her as much as the other characters because she was cold and unfeeling but I didn’t see her that way at all. I saw a determined woman do whatever she had to do to take care of the people she loved. The lengths that she went through to help Ben and the people that were important to Ben, I dug it. I liked her. She made mistakes in her past and she owned up to them. She tried to fix them, to make amends and I ended up really admiring her. It wasn’t hard to see why Izzy was so in love with her. Seeing him come around with his heart, for her made me love Izzy all the more. And I loved the hell out of Izzy before this book. I was one of the people who wanted Izzy to end up with Maria but I’m not at mad that he ended up with Eden. I’m total Team Eden now.

This book was action packed and it was filled with all of the things that I love about the Troubleshooters series. I’m sad that this is the end of my Troubleshooters reading adventure but I’m looking forward to reading the new series. I just hope it’s as good as this book/series is.

Grade: 4.75 out of 5

This book is available from Ballantine Books.  You can purchase it here or here in e-format.

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Throwback Thursday: The Quotes (3)

Posted January 2, 2014 by Rowena in Features | 6 Comments

throwback-thursday

This week’s quote comes from one of my all time favorite series by Suzanne Brockmann.  The Troubleshooters series, Over the Edge in particular.  Sam Starrett is one of my favorite characters EVER and I don’t care what Holly thinks…haha.

photo

The first time that I read this book, this scene made me laugh out loud. And each time that I read it, I smile because it’s one of my favorite scenes.

Who remembers this book and this scene in particular? The sexual chemistry between both Sam and Alyssa and then Stan and Teri? This book was so full of goodness that I wanted to share a little of that goodness today.

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Review: Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann.

Posted April 29, 2013 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Rowena’s review of Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann.

New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann, whom USA Today calls “the reigning queen of military suspense,” breaks out a rapid-fire collection of pulse-pounding, heart-tugging stories and novellas featuring the intrepid men and women of Troubleshooters Inc., fiction’s hottest ultimate counterterrorism squad.

• Tough-as-nails Troubleshooters operative Sam Starrett learns the agony of loving someone in danger—and the hell of waiting on the home front—as his wife, Alyssa, hurtles into a foreign hotspot that’s about to boil over.

• Navy SEAL Frank O’Leary’s ill-fated holiday reunion with his older brother takes a turn for the better—when a chance encounter on a rainy New Orleans street gives Frank a reason to be thankful after all.

• In a maze of tunnels deep beneath a military base in Germany, Jules Cassidy, Alyssa Locke, and their comrades in arms match wits with terrorists on a mission with explosive consequences.

Plus more never-before-released adventures featuring Jenk, Izzy, Gillman, Lopez, Kenny, Savannah, and other members of SEAL Team 16—along with Suzanne Brockmann’s exclusive interviews with her beloved characters.

Looking for the best kind of trouble? You’ve found it!

This book is a collection of short stories surrounding the Troubleshooter folks and well, mostly they include short stories featuring Sam, Alyssa, Jules and Robin and the people around them.  It also includes character interviews with Suz herself and a pretty fantastic Troubleshooters timeline that was nice to read and catch up on.

I’m not going to review each story separately but I will talk about what I liked, what I didn’t like and what I could have done without.

What I liked:  I should start this by saying that there were only a couple of short stories that were included in this book that I’d read already so for the most part, all of this was new to me.  I liked seeing what Sam, Alyssa, Jules, Robin and the rest of the folks were doing.  I liked seeing what everyone else was up to now that their stories are done with.

I really liked Jack and Arlene’s story.  I remember Arlene from Jules and Robin’s book as Maggie’s mother who was serving in the military and was overseas all the time.  I remember really liking Will (Arlene’s brother) and Dolphina’s love story in All Through the Night and I remember really liking and caring for Arlene’s daughter, Maggie.  It was really good to see these guys again and the plan that Maggie concocts with Jack to get Arlene to stay in the states was funny.  Their story was fun but at the same time, it was real and the characters were awesome. I think this was my favorite story in the bunch and that’s saying something because there were many short stories featuring my favorite of all heroes, Sam f!@#$%$# Starrett.

I also liked the little chat fests with Izzy, Jenk and Lopez.  Those are always fun.

What I didn’t like:  I can’t say that I was a fan of Frank’s story and that’s mostly because I know what happens to him in, is it Over the Edge?  I remember feeling bad in Over the Edge and him laying in Terri’s arms so to see this story with him alive and well and then knowing what happens later on, I was annoyed.  It was like grieving all over again and I just could have done without that.

What I could have done without: A huge part of this Troubleshooters series is the equal rights movement and I really respect Suz for being very vocal about it and doing things about it.  What I’m finding very frustrating is that this equal rights agenda that she’s got going on in her real life is front and center of the Troubleshooters series.

I started reading this series because I had just watched the movie Tears of the Sun and I wanted to read about those kinds of guys in my romance novels.  I came to love the Troubleshooters because the guys in the books were so flawed, so strong and yet, so very real that they became my favorite people.  They each had a different story and they each tackled their issues like a real person did.  They weren’t perfect but that’s what I loved about them.

Now, I just feel that her agenda is really taking the story away from these characters and on to what she feels is right.  That’s her right as these are her stories and she can tell them however she wants but I really miss reading a story about couples falling in love in the middle of bullets flying and terrorists trying to ruin lives and good guys saving the world.  The romance is still there but the romance is sitting prettily in the back seat, waiting for her turn.  Casee wrote a post about this a while ago and really, she nails my thoughts on this topic so much better.  You can read that post here.

Overall, this was a great book to fall into.  The Troubleshooters (old and new) are all mentioned or in it and it’s enjoyable to see everyone again.  I would have preferred reading a full length novel about one character but it’s a Troubleshooters series and I’m a sucker for them so I’ll always come back, even if I wish for more of things that aren’t there anymore for me.

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

This book is available from Ballantine. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.

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