Suzanne Brockmann
Ballantine Books
July 11, 2017
Blurb from Goodreads: 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.
SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW
I’ve read around 10 Suzanne Brockmann novels, so it’s safe to say that I typically enjoy her writing. I thought I had read several in the Troubleshooters series, but it turns out I was wrong (well, it happens 😉 ) and I had only read the first (which was really good, btw).
Obviously this preamble is leading somewhere and that is unfortunately to how disappointed I felt with Some Kind of Hero.
The first few chapters really swept the reader up into the action. Shayla Whitman is a writer with a vivid imagination, sense of humor, and a voice inside her head, Harry, who interjects his thoughts frequently. There’s a chase scene at the beginning which brings Shayla together with the hero, Peter Greene. Shayla just does some crazy stunts while doing the “follow that car” routine.
After this, Some Kind of Hero starts to lag and it feels like the novel is all over the place, pretty much literally. While using the point-of-views (povs) of both main characters has become typical in romances, at least three other povs popped up, thus distancing the reader from Shayla and Peter. We’re also in the head of the missing, Maddie, so that eliminates a lot of suspense in this romantic suspense.
One pov comes from a character from a previous novel in the series. Unless you’ve read the series, you are thrown in with people you don’t know, and I dare to say, don’t care about, while neither main character is in the scene. I presume it’s to give Pete some character. For me, it was just: why should I care about any of these people?
The backstory of Pete’s love affair with Maddie’s mother, Lisa, is brought in and we are not talking about a paragraph description. It’s like a mini-novel. I suppose this was done, again, to give Pete some much-needed personality. Perhaps it does, to a limited degree.
Unfortunately, Brockmann also chose to have Shayla continue to verbally “shush” the man in her head. Now, granted this is fiction, but if a woman you just met kept saying “shush” at regular intervals when there was no one around, would you still really be standing there? It was a cute idea, but I think she should have limited Shayla’s “shushing”; she could have continued with the interior monologue, which is very amusing, but made Shayla a bit more “real” because I am certain that Shayla’s sharp sons would have called her on that “shushing” long before.
Also, I thought it was a bit lame when there is a possible disaster and the first person Pete thought of was the woman he had known for two days and not his daughter. It kind of undermined all of those attempts to reveal his character at least in a good way.
Perhaps if you have been an avid reader of this series, you are more likely to overlook the elements that to me make Some Kind of Hero a very average novel.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
From Amazon: Some Kind of Hero
rating: 
3 out of 5 butterflies
Great review!
Thank you , Robin!
Thanks appreciate the input because I’ve long been a Suzanne Brockmann fan and often captivated by her writing. Good to know.
Those are just my thoughts. Most of the reviews on goodreads are 4 or more. Also, we know that once you start writing you start looking at novels differently than regular readers.
This is also true. It shouldn’t be “in the head” which a lot of that smacks of. A quick way to get words on a page instead of investing. I think too often people rush to get a book out there. Having said that, sometimes, it doesn’t gel as you’d wish and you don’t realize something’s missing until too late.
I’m afraid I agree with you about some writers trying to get their next book out there too quickly. I recently read the third book by one writer in a six-month time period and it just wasn’t as good as the first.
For Brockmann, though, she has such a huge fan base who really just want to read about their favorite characters, kind of in a fanfic way. A lot just don’t care about the writing or the characterization or plot.
This is true. I care more about connectivity and something memorable that I loved to the point of rereading, or as you have mentioned before, dragging it out because it was that good 😊