This writer has a lot of promise and since a SEAL team is liquid gold in the romance world, the premise automatically has appeal, but this effort falls short, leaving me very dissatisfied.The biggest issue is the romantic suspense portion. The villains are incredibly two-dimensional and the reader is left with zero understanding of their motivations. Ever. At no time were the terrorists' or the double agent's reason for hijacking the plane revealed and that's a pretty big hole in the plot.The next major issue involves the heroine who is purportedly so "ordinary" looking as to be someone semi-invisible, to the point where three SEALS trained in seeing and remembering minute details somehow don't remember their first meetings with her in an airport. And how exactly does her so-called plain appearance relate to her having no friends either in her previous job or in her new one? Considering how she is presented as kind, brave, and competent at her job, that seems impossible. This theme of unexplained social invisibility also got extremely old as it was a conduit for a tremendous amount of self-doubt regarding the heroine's belief in her suitability for the hero. Part of a lack of understanding regarding the heroine's appearance on the part of the reader (at least this reader) was that there was not a lot of internal dialogue from the hero about her looks after he began to be attracted to her. This could be related to the rather unforgivable romance faux pas of our lead couple NEVER HAVING SEX IN THIS BOOK. Seriously? Considering the other books promoted on the Amazon page and on Goodreads for this book, that omission comes as an unpleasant shock, and it's not as if this novel was miscategorized and it really should have been a sweet romance with all the naughty bits behind a closed door. There are still some hot make out sessions, but maybe because of the heat being so toned down, the hero, who sounds like he's in his early thirties, reads as much younger. These rather significant flaws naturally overshadow the author's good ear for dialogue and an excellent sense of dramatic pacing, which makes me extremely sad as the work feels like this emerging author would have benefited tremendously from a good editor who would have helped her work on this story until all these wrinkles were ironed out. As it stands, this book feels like yet another author who jumped the gun on publishing and ended up putting out a mediocre romance novel when their inherent talent would have benefitted from some additional mentoring and maturation. The story seemed to be good but it was just too far-fetched for me to actually like it. The chemistry between the two wasn't really there and the story line was just not believable enough. All in all, it wasn't a bad book but just never seemed to grab me enough. Will be reading the next in series to see if it gets any better. The team did interest me and I want to read more about them but needed more for the girl especially with the chemistry.
What do You think about Protecting Caroline (2014)?
It was just okay for me. Maybe because it was so far fetched, but I got bored often with this book.
—bridgeta93
Loved it!!!! Already reading the second one:)
—Kirara
