My take in brief: I did like it, but it felt a bit slow, and I felt the juggling of three romances detracted from all of them.  However, I think I just tried the wrong one by this author, and I have already bought another Brockmann.

Series: Yes. Published in 2000, it is the first of Brockmann’s phenomenally successful Toubleshooters Series, the 13th of which was released this year.

Heroine and Hero: Pediatrician Dr. Kelly Ashton, divorced, commuting from work in Boston to the Baldwin’s Bridge to take care of her dying father, Charles Ashton, wealthy patrician WWII vet. Navy SEAL Tom Paoletti, recuperating from a head injury at his uncle Joe Paoletti’s house, next door to the Ashton residence. Uncle Joe, a landscaper, served with Charles in WWII and they have been friends ever since.

Plot summary from the Brockmann website:

After a near-fatal head injury, U.S. Navy SEAL Lieutenant Tom Paoletti catches a terrifying glimpse of an international terrorist in his New England hometown. When he calls for help, the Navy dismisses the danger as injury-induced imaginings. In a desperate last-ditch effort to prevent disaster, Tom creates his own makeshift counterterrorist team, assembling his most loyal officers, two elderly veterans of the Second World War, a couple of misfit teenagers, and Dr. Kelly Ashton — the sweet “girl next door” who has grown into a remarkable woman. Once known as the town’s infamous bad boy, Tom has always longed for Kelly. Now he has one final chance for happiness, one last chance to win her heart, and one desperate chance to save the day….

Fun factoid: Read the discussion of patriotism and being “Relentlessly American” at Teach Me Tonight, inspired by Sarah Frantz’s “If you like Suzanne Brockmann” post at Dear Author.

Word on the Web:

The Romance Reader, 4 hearts

Mrs. Giggles, 80

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Sarah, B

All About Romance, A-

Bookloons, 3 books (out of 3?)

Booksmugglers, 6 out of 10

Amazon.com, 4.5 stars after 61 reviews

Audiobook note: I listened to The Unsung Hero on audio. The male narrator did a “voiced” reading, so the dying Charles sounded like a dying 80 year old man, and the young David sounded like a nerdy teen.  The female voices were, as usual with a male narrator, horrible. I now have a new audio romance rule: I just don’t want to hear men pretending to be women or women pretending to be men anymore. More of my thoughts on audiobooks here.

The Racy Romance Review:

I was eager to try this author, because she gets rave reviews. However, I found The Unsung Hero very slow. I did something I have never done with an audio book: put the playback speed on my IPod to “fastest”, and even then I had to force myself to finish it.

This book juggles four plots, and three romantic couples, but does not feel overcrowded because most of the characters and plots are very simple.

The best part of the book was the hero, Tom Paoletti. He’s sexy and smart and strong, a leader of an elite SEAL team (is there an unelite SEAL team?), who is having a crisis of confidence after a head injury with unclear prognosis. He thinks he sees a terrorist at the airport, but isn’t sure if it’s all in his imagination.  If he tries to prevent a terrorist attack, will he be viewed as crazy and relieved of command? If he doesn’t, will innocent people be killed?

It’s interesting to read this after 9/11. On the one hand, the likelihood that a terrorist would be at Logan is all too believable. On the other, it seems much less likely that officials would not take Tom’s warnings seriously.

Tom has lusted after neighbor Kelly Preston since his teen years when they shared some kisses. She has also lusted after him, but he fears he will hurt her and she has a good girl image she finds it hard to overcome. I personally don’t enjoy books in which the characters do not seem to have changed in how they relate to each other when 20 years have intervened, but Tom and Kelly are right back in high school for at least the first half of the book.

Several other reviewers have complained about Kelly, that she seems to change her mind about what she wants (just sex, or more) and I have to agree with them. It just wasn’t clear to me why she wouldn’t want to explore a relationship with Tom, especially after they start sleeping together (in a terrific scene, which I could probably use as Exhibit A for “feminist-approved hetero sex”). I also found Kelly’s highly emotional reaction to her own cancer patient to be very unrealistic, or at least not reflective of a strong character on her part. I am not suggesting a doctor is never hard hit by a patient’s prognosis, but no reasons were supplied as to why Kelly would be so connected to this particular patient, when she likely has about 400 minors in her practice.

Another plot involves Tom’s niece Mallory, and her relationship with geeky graphic novelist David, whom she agrees to pose for. Of the three romances, this one worked best for me. It was very sweet.

Much of the book takes place in flashback, to when Charles and Joe meet in WWII at the home of a resistance fighter Cybile, with whom they both fall in love. I’m privileged to spend a few hours a week with a retired four star Army Colonel, also a WWII vet, who fought in France, and it’s very true to my experience with him that such “heroes” do not take special pride in their accomplishments. However, Charles and Joe’s intervening 50 years seem not to have happened, as far as their emotional development goes. Their relationship was very Grumpy Old Men, and since it and the flashbacks took up so many pages, not much was left for Tom and Kelly. I was actually more interested in the fact that Charles was an absentee, disapproving, alcoholic father to Kelly, and waited in vain for any real page time to be spent repairing that important relationship.

Except for the (terrific) brief prologue when Tom gets injured, nothing actiony happens in Baldwin’s Bridge until the end of the book. At the end of the book, all of the characters come together, even some of Tom’s SEAL gang, in an action packed finale.  I kept thinking that if the whole book had had a propulsive plot, I would have loved it.

On the plus side, as everyone knows, Brockmann’s a terrific writer (even I, with my total lack of literary skills, can figure that out) and every time I thought the characters were going to jump off the bridge into irredeemable immaturity or cliché, Brockmann veered off that course and rewarded my sticking with it. I’m not committing to all 13 Troubleshooters, but this author will definitely get another chance with me, sooner rather than later.

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