Navy SEAL's Deadly Secret was just an okay read for me. It's not my favorite book written by Cindy Dees.

ARC copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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

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.

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 (#NavySealsDeadlySecret) from Harlequin Books through #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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.

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