Review: The Defiant Hero by Suzanne Brockmann

Title: The Defiant Hero
Author: Suzanne Brockman
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Grade: B
Reason for Reading: I read The Unsung Hero some months ago and meant to read more about Brockmann’s Navy S.E.A.L.’s. But given my reader ADD, I hadn’t managed it until now.

Synopsis:

In The Unsung Hero, award-winning author Suzanne Brockmann dazzled readers with her remarkable cast of tough and tender U.S. Navy SEALs. Now her daring men in uniform return for The Defiant Hero–a thrilling novel of steadfast courage, intimate passions, and the profound risks that are taken in the name of love…. “The United States refuses to negotiate with terrorists.” Meg Moore remembered the warning from her job as a translator in a European embassy. Those same words will spell out a death sentence for her daughter and grandmother who have been kidnapped by a lethal group called the Extremists. Meg will do anything to meet their unspeakable demands; anything–even kill–to save her child. When Navy SEAL Lieutenant, junior grade, John Nilsson is summoned to Washington, D.C., by the FBI to help negotiate a hostage situation, the last person he expects to see holding a foreign ambassador at gunpoint is Meg. He hasn’t seen her in years, but he’s never forgotten how it feels to hold her in his arms. John could lose his career if he helps her escape. She will lose her life if he doesn’t….

My Thoughts: There are a couple of things that seem to be consistently present in Brockmann’s books–and I say this as a clear Brockmann expert who has now read a whopping two of her stories. Brockmann writes characters that come across as real to the reader, and she’s the only author I’d probably buy for a non-romance-reading male friend. Also, I could absolutely see her Troubleshooters becoming their own TV show, and I don’t generally say that about most of what I read, given that I don’t watch TV.

Again, Brockmann manages to interweave a lot of stuff in this book. There’s so much going on here, but she juggles each plot thread so smoothly that I didn’t feel any of them were short-changed.

The characters, as I mentioned, felt real to me in the sense that I never felt like they were larger than life and couldn’t really exist out of a cheesy novel. That being said, I didn’t like them nearly as much as I remember liking the characters in The Unsung Hero. I didn’t really warm up to Meg very much at first, even though I absolutely understood why she was doing what she had to do. I found the theme of trying to figure out exactly what one would do for one’s child fascinating, especially since I don’t have any children, but I also thought that Meg spent too much time not trusting John, who she clearly wanted to help her. After all, fighting terrorists was part of his job, not hers, and he would, feasibly, know what he was doing. I also think that as a reader I should have been let into her head more than I was, and so a lot of the time she came across as just a touch too shrill and difficult. Nils, though, was a complete doll and I loved him in a that’s-way-too-good-to-be-true sort of way. (I don’t mean to say that he wasn’t terribly realistic, but, well, he is a sensitive but macho man, and despite some of his baggage, I’d have slept with him.

As to the secondary romances, my favorite was the story we got in flashbacks of Eve’s grandmother and the Englishman she falls in love with. In that particular case, I liked the feeling that we were looking back on the events through the eyes of someone who realized her own mistakes. I also just adored Eve in general, because it’s not often that I read about feisty old ladies in my books that aren’t just there for comic relief.

Lastly, I guess I should comment on the Sam/Alyssa storyline. I don’t think I’m entirely on board with this romance yet. I get that they’ve both got chemistry out the wazzoo, but at this point Sam should stop being such a jerk and Alyssa should remove the stick from her ass.

As for the plot, I thought it was well handled, and had I read it another time I might have been rivvetted. But since I found it difficult to warm up to Meg, who was the center of a lot of what was going on, I found the book quite easy to set down. Once I was reading, I was perfectly engaged and wanted to read more, but I wasn’t automatically reaching for the book when I had a free moment.

Overall, now that I have more of a sense of who the rest of the Troubleshooters are, I think I’ll keep reading. I hope that Brockmann writes some better heroines, though, because these chicks are a bit underwhelming.