Navy SEAL Brett Morgan has come home to recover after a disastrous deployment, desperate to remember what happened. As he struggles to find his feet as a civilian, he intervenes in an armed robbery, saving the life of waitress Anna Larkin. But there’s more to Anna’s past than meets the eye and as that past circles dangerously closer, Brett will have to draw on all of his combat experience to keep them both alive.
Cindy Dees started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan.
After earning a degree in Russian and East European studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in the history of the Air Force. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the “C-5” Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, she got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001.
3.5-4 Stars! I really enjoyed this Harlequin romantic suspense novel to the point that I would rate it as one of the best ones I’ve ever read. The way PTSD is handled in this deeply emotional novel about healing from violence is both sensitive and responsible. I love how the author was also very deliberate in making consent sexy but also very explicit and taking nothing for granted. This was especially important with the kind of trauma the heroine has been through.
The premise is that both Anna and Brett are recent (reluctant) returnees to the hometown they both rushed to escape right after high school. Both return broken from recent experiences of deadly, violent pasts- Brett on the war front, and Anna from a deadly abusive marriage with the town favourite, and they’re both back home to heal. Anna and Brett reluctantly find understanding in each other and begin to heal, but someone is not happy to see them together moving on and is ready to kill to prevent them from being together.
I loved this couple. Individually, they were broken but together, it’s like their pieces came together. The good thing is that love healed them but it didn’t cancel the last, this romance still acknowledges that both Anna and Brett still have a lot of work to do but they have each other’s support. Something I was a little uncertain about that didn’t really come through in the end was why Brett was resentful of his family and felt unloved by them at the beginning. I kept waiting for their true traits of loving the ranch more than they loved their children to come through but never saw anything but absolute love and support for him. I think that was a plot seed that was sowed in the beginning that never really came to fruition that kind of bothered me. I know Brett has siblings and that hopefully this is the beginning of the series (and I loved this enough that I want to read them ALL), so maybe more of that back story of familial resentment will come out in future books. Highly recommend checking out this one if you like gentle romantic suspense and the damaged hero/heroine trope and how love can be healing. Trigger warnings for domestic violence and PTSD.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Harlequin Books through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
This book pulled me in and kept me hooked from start to finish - though Harlequin's titling department blew it on this one. Brett is not a Navy SEAL and never has been. He was in the Army's Special Forces, a Ranger. Nor did he have a deadly secret.
After his last disastrous deployment, Brett returned to his hometown and his family's ranch. Hurting in mind, body, and soul, he can't remember the events leading up to the event that left him and the dog Reggie as the only survivors. Fighting survivor's guilt and PTSD, Brett has holed up in a cabin on the ranch, drinking too much and only leaving the cabin once a month for supplies. Everything changes during his latest trip to town when he saves a waitress from an armed robber.
Anna left town right after graduation, along with the town's golden boy, Eddie. Both had Hollywood dreams that turned into a nightmare for Anna. She gave up her dreams to support them while Eddie drank and drugged his life away. Eddie became an abusive husband, and her time with him was heartbreaking. Her escape from him left her with deep-seated feelings of guilt and a belief that she didn't deserve to live. That belief is front and center when a drugged-up armed robber takes her hostage when he attempts to rob the café where she works.
I enjoyed reading about the ups and downs of the relationship between Brett and Anna. Brett was a reluctant hero when he saved her from the robber. He couldn't stop himself from intervening, but it was a subconscious reaction, not something he wanted to do. He was stunned to realize that Anna expected to die and wouldn't fight it. Stopping the robber was, as Anna described it, "A totally one-sided smackdown." Anna and Brett parted ways, but Anna later drove to Brett's cabin to return something to him. He wasn't wholly welcoming, but an accident formed an unexpected connection between them. Brett found himself visiting Anna the following day to find out if she was okay and ended up helping her with her house project.
The events that haunt Anna and Brett have each trying to escape the memories. Because they understand each other's pain, their time together gives them some of that escape. As their feelings for each other grow, they discover that the pain begins to fade. I liked how they were sensitive to each other's triggers and took care with what they said and did. I liked how their support of each other helped further their healing, but that each knew there was still work to be done.
The suspense was excellent. After her husband's death, Anna returned to her hometown but could not escape the memories. She also had to deal with Eddie's family, who blamed her for his failures in California and his death. Brett's protective instincts are aroused when unexplained things happen, like a brick through her window and someone running her off the road. Nasty confrontations with the exes add stress, and matters are complicated by the creepy store owner who provides Anna with her home renovation supplies. When Anna disappears, it's up to Brett and the sheriff to figure out what happened. I was glued to the pages until the final confrontation ended, and Anna was safe.
I felt for Brett, his fear for Anna, and how his flashbacks fought with his efforts to find her. Combined with Anna's flashbacks about Eddie's death, this was a very emotional section of the book. I liked how some good came out of the ordeal, including Brett and Anna admitting their feelings.
Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret begins The Runaway Ranch series with an intense story of recovery and finding love along the way. While there were some technical issues I had with parts of this story, overall I was easily drawn into Brett’s and Anna’s world with all of its intricacies, fears, and underlying danger. Those few issues, for me, took nothing away from the emotional reactions I had as this couple fights themselves as well as others to find their happiness together… eventually.
Brett returned home after his most recent deployment, wounded in mind, body, and spirit. He’s lost in the past with a memory that is only bits and pieces of his last assignment, the last mission that went so horribly wrong. Until or unless he recovers those lost moments of time Brett isn’t going back to the military or anywhere but his lonely existence at the family cabin avoiding everyone possible while continuing his obligatory once-a-month trip to town for supplies and human contact.
It’s while at the local diner, making that necessary trip to town that Brett encounters Anna for the first time since her return home. He will step into a dangerous situation to save a woman from a drugged robber without thinking simply reacting. The woman’s absolute surrender to the idea of that knife at her throat taking her life spurred Brett on to take down the deranged man… no one should welcome death as she seemed to, forgetting that he himself wasn’t exactly the life of the party right now.
Anna returned home after the death of her husband – at her own hands. Oh, it clearly was an accident when during a drunken rage he lunged for her as she turned from the cutting board with a knife still in her hands which he impaled himself on. Everyone, including the police, say it was only an accident that Anna did nothing wrong at that moment… but she doesn’t believe that for one second and wishes for death to take her away from the memories of the past. She’s dealt with her husband’s drinking, his verbal abuse which soon turned into physical beatings for all of her marriage. But she cannot deal with the fact that she was holding the knife that ultimately set her free.
Her husband’s family can’t believe that either. Soon the threats toward Anna are more than vicious rumors and she’ll turn to the one man she trusts for help.
Anna and Brett are both dealing with PTSD, for different reasons, and in different ways but at the core, each is wounded and searching for an escape. Neither holds out hope for closure for Anna cannot bring back the dead and Brett cannot recall why so many of his men died on that last mission. I felt that their mental injuries were presented in a way that made sense for them, and also from the outside looking in for the reader. Watching them begin to heal, slowly but with each other’s help was an emotional journey for me. The danger that they both were placed in only added to the intensity of their story.
I enjoyed Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret and will definitely be following the series.
Navy SEAL Brett Morgan has come home to recover after a disastrous deployment, desperate to remember what happened. As he struggles to find his feet as a civilian, he intervenes in an armed robbery, saving the life of waitress Anna Larkin. But there’s more to Anna’s past than meets the eye and as that past circles dangerously closer, Brett will have to draw on all of his combat experience to keep them both alive. This was a decent read. I really liked Brett, but I had some issues with Anna. Some of the wording made me think the book would be more fitting in previous decades, but nothing that deterred from the plot. Overall not bad. I recommend. **I voluntarily read and reviewed this book
This is another military romance where the characters have issues due to military service. And again, this is handles gently and fits right into the story line. I will warn the readers that there is a lot of sex in this book
The Navy SEALs Deadly Secret is the first novel in Cindy Dees' new Runaway Ranch series, and while it was a quick, well-written, emotional and engaging read, and while I'll read anything with Navy SEALs in the title, I had more than a few issues with both the title and this novel, which is why I'm giving it only 3 stars.
Let's start with the title--first, there is no deadly secret, certainly not relating to the hero, Brett Morgan, who isn't a Navy SEAL, he was in Special Forces, a U.S. Army Ranger, who, after 4 tours of duty in Afghanistan, can't remember what happened on his last mission, one which left him alive and his comrades dead, leaving him with PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares, and what is clearly survivor's guilt, blaming himself for the deaths of his men, although his inability to recall the details is quite literally driving him to drink. He's holed up in a remote mountain cabin on his family's large ranch with the injured service dog he adopted, where he's been drinking himself into oblivion, but must fulfill his father's demand that in order to stay at the cabin, he must get out, go into town, and see people a minimum of once a month. As the novel opens, he's at Pittypat's Diner, nursing his one cup of coffee and fulfilling that obligation, but it isn't something he's happy about and he can't wait to get out there and back to his cabin.
His waitress, Anna Larkin, has more than a few issues in her past as well. She's a local gal who ran away from the small town of Sunny Creek with her high school boyfriend, Eddie, right after graduation. Eddie was a wannabe actor, and Anna married him and followed him out to Hollywood. What she didn't know was that Eddie was a control freak and a drinker, and when he drank, he was both emotionally and physically abusive to her. Ten years into their marriage, when Eddie still was unable to land a film role and while Anna was working to pay all their bills, Anna accidentally killed him as he was about to attack her in a drunken rage, and although she was cleared of any wrongdoing, she holds herself responsible for his death, as does his family, who would love to see her dead or behind bars, preferably the former.
On that particular day, when a scruffy, scary, hopped up on drugs customer walks in, puts a knife to Anna's throat and demands the contents of the cash register, Anna assumes that he will kill her and that she'll finally get what's coming to her, payment in full for killing Eddie, but Brett, seeing that lost and submissive look in her eyes, comes to her rescue, beating and subduing the felon, and saving Anna's life. After the police arrive and Brett follows them to the station to file a report, Anna is cleaning up the bloody floor and discovers a gold medallion under the counter. She soon learns that it belongs to Brett, and when her shift is over, drives up the mountain to return it to him and to thank him for saving her, although it's clear she would have preferred her life to end at the diner, and so begins their on again, off again, relationship.
As any romance reader can anticipate, these two broken people are going to be attracted to another, feel unworthy, and eventually help heal one another, which is why this novel was a little too predictable, and would have greatly benefited from a more complex plot than Anna's nearly deadly car accident, her abduction, and Brett coming to her rescue yet again. My issues with this novel stem from my knowledge of PTSD, and my knowledge that there is no quick fix for it, certainly not as quick a fix as the hero experiences. While I enjoyed the heat between these two likable characters, it seemed unlikely to me that any woman who'd been as abused as Anna would be so willing and eager to jump into bed with a virtual stranger--let alone one who drinks. Once Eddie showed Anna his dark, abusive side, since she was the breadwinner, I couldn't help but wonder why on earth she stayed with him for a decade.
This is not a bad read, it moves along quickly and the characters are, as stated previously, likable, but it was far too predictable, the healing process which both main characters faced was given short shrift, and since you know beforehand that there will be an HEA ending, this novel would certainly have benefited from a more complex plot, and from an epilogue, rather than the abrupt HEA ending the author chose to write.
I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.
Brett is back home from the navy recovering when he comes across a robbery and ends up saving Anna Larkin's life. Anna Larkin has had more then her share of problems after being victim to abuse and after the death of her husband she went back to her home town to pick up the picks and restore the house shes living in. After a series of creepy encounters, her ex's family members who clearly aren't happy with her, its clear she needs protecting and Brett cant help but want to be there for her.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved watching as things progressed in the book. As things start going down, I loved that there was enough guesses to keep me wondering who was the one behind everything. Its clear his family hates her and I kept wondering if they were going to be more trouble as things went on in the book. I was also curious to know more deeper when it came to how her husband died and everything. This was a pretty great book and I really enjoyed it it kept me guessing throughout the book.
Except for a major boo-boo, I would have given this story 5 stars. Why the reduction to 3? The title implies the male protagonist is a Navy SEAL. He isn't. He's a spec ops Army RANGER! Did the publisher not so inform the cover artist? Or did they not care? When I read there was a Navy SEAL in the story, I was interested. When it became clear, early in the book that this was not the case, it didn't keep me from reading (after all, I'm not against Army Rangers), but it implied I should watch out for other errors--in spite of the excellent presentation of an abused female protagonist who is struggling to get her house and her life in order even as she continues to be threatened.
The relationship between Brett, also an injured and struggling military man, and Anna kept me reading and hoping that their respective lives would be made safe and end on a positive note. What a shame that the shadow of other errors continued to plague me as I moved through the story.
Publishers should be aware that readers catch errors and that said errors have consequences for our trust that they won't screw up the stories we want to read.
Although the story moved along well, the editorial errors were massive. The cover title speaks of Navy SEAL yet within the pages of the ebook, reference was made only once to the hero being in the Navy. All other references were to the Army/Rangers. Also noted several instances of the female's name changed. Most of the time I can move past these types of editorial mistakes but in this case they detracted. As a Navy veteran, I hold my stories with Navy characters to a higher standard.