HOT SEAL Hero (HOT SEAL Team #7)
by Lynn Raye Harris
Blurb:
She
fears for her life.
He’ll
risk his to protect her.
Falling
in love? Not part of the plan…
Chloe
Cooper is on the run from an abusive ex. Living in a new state, with a new
name, she’s ready to focus on rebuilding her life. She’s got a job she loves, a
new home—and a sexy Navy SEAL neighbor who makes her pulse flutter in spite of
her determination not to get involved. But when a threatening message arrives,
her dread about what her ex will do if he finds her forces her to make a
choice.
Ryan
“Dirty Harry” Callahan is protective by nature. When he meets Chloe, it’s clear
she’s skittish about something. When he learns why she ran from her old life,
his first objective is to keep her safe. His second is to make sure she knows
she can trust him—and that she’ll have a posse of Navy SEALs at her back if she
ever needs them.
When
the attraction between Ryan and Chloe explodes, they’re helpless to resist its
seductive heat. Everything is finally going right for Chloe—until her worst
fears come true. With Chloe missing and her life on the line, Ryan will stop at
nothing to get her back. Before he loses the woman he loves forever.
Themes: Contemporary
Rating: 4.5 stars
Heat Rating: 
Review:
Wow, the HOT guys never cease to amaze me with
the challenges they are willing to overcome in order to keep their women safe—even
the wrath of Mendez doesn’t scare these men when their ladies' lives on are on
the line! I have been dying for this story since the teaser in the last story
and Dirty Harry didn’t let me down.
While his woman might have seemed sweet and innocent in the beginning her
sass and sensuality soon shined through, like any good southern lady. The mix
of danger, passion, friendship and love in Ryan and Chloe’s story was so
perfectly rounded that I barely realized the story was almost over until BAM it
was, which makes it the best type of story in my opinion. The action was just enough to keep everything
from being too mundane for lovers of the HOT series and Ryan found his perfect
match in the down-to-earth Chloe, making their love story, while fraught with
drama, truly a story of two people finding their way from neighbors to friends
to lovers. I am dying to see what comes
next, and of course long-time readers know that Harris tortures us with a hint
of it at the very end of Ryan’s book and now we just have to (IMPATIENTLY) wait
for the next book to finally fulfill our dreams and give us Neo and Kayla’s
HEA. I am a huge fan of this series and
cannot get enough of Lynn Raye Harris, but Ryan and Chloe’s story will definitely
be one that holds a special place for me reminding me that even the smoothest
of operators can fall like a ton of bricks when a woman finally earns his trust
and love.
Chloe
has finally escaped a past that left her with serious trust issues and she is
determined to make something special of her life in her new home. When she is forced to confront a naked, and
extremely sexy, but befuddled man on her first day in her new home, she has mixed
reactions to say the least, but soon she is finding that her new neighbor is
way more than meets the eye. Ryan “Dirty
Harry” Callahan is reeling from a serious hangover when he is confronted by a
sexy woman banging on his door way too early and demanding he move his truck. After some clumsiness and idiot moves, he finally gets his shit together and is
able to put his hero skills to good use in getting to know his pretty new
neighbor. Way more attracted to him than
any other man she has ever encountered, Chloe finds that resistance is pointless
and soon she can’t resist his charms or his body, but when danger begins to
peek around every corner she knows they need to cool off their new affair. Pulling away was the smartest thing she could
do to keep Ryan and herself safe, but
sometimes smart isn’t the best thing for the heart, and only by trusting in the
relationship they have built and the love that is blossoming between them can
they truly find a way to overcome the enemies surrounding them and be together.
Chloe
and Ryan were interesting characters, having been broken emotionally in
both small and large ways that would make a relationship rocky ground. Chloe obviously has issues with her
self-confidence, and in trust in her instincts and in others after the
disaster of her last relationship.
Seeing her growing from that, especially as she got to know and believe
in Ryan and his friends was amazing. Any
woman that has gone through that type of trauma needs a hero in big and small
ways, but the most important is showing her that not all men are bastards that
fly off the handle at the smallest provocation, giving her back the space she
needed to be herself. I loved Ryan for
the way he always seemed to know when she needed that subtle assurance and push
to be herself. In the end I love Chloe’s character for all the little parts
that made her unique, but the combination of everything, her sassiness,
sweetness, inner strength, vulnerability, and kickass protectiveness, were what
really made me love her—and of course she had the proper combination for a
perfect fried chicken like a good Southern girl should. Oddly we barely got to
brush on the issue Ryan had, but it was an important one that could easily
have come between him and Chloe had he not so easily exposed himself to her, so
they could work through the problem together.
That strength through his fear made me love him almost as much as his
willingness to do anything to keep his woman safe, but that is an expected
trait in a HOT operator, while his willingness to confront his personal fear
made him special. Of course he is sexy as hell, beyond HOTT, and a badass warrior,
but his playful and sweet side were kind of unexpected and something that
seemed to only come out to play when he was with Chloe. These two really seemed to even each other
out nicely.
HOT SEAL Hero
is definitely a story about a man coming to the rescue of the woman he is and
then has fallen for, but I think it safe to say that just as important is the
story of a woman becoming her own hero.
Chloe slowly finds her way out of the shell she was forced into for her
own mental safety during her disastrous last relationship; with the help of
Ryan and his friends, she is finding her way back to the woman she was before and that she was always mean to be.
She is a woman that will stand up for herself, even when she is close
to death, and protect not only her own life but the lives of the man she loves
and their friends when she knows they are in danger. Her intelligence and wit,
along with her wholesomeness and light make her the perfect addition to the HOT
family and I can see her being one of the reasons that the whole team fights
like hell to get home, not just Ryan himself. Ryan has to work through some
issues to find that his attraction to Chloe is more than just intense lust, his
fears and hang-ups not immediately allowing him to risk his heart, but she
steals it right out from under his watchful eye anyway. His intensity
and laughter are used in equal measure to show Chloe that he is the type of guy
that she can trust with her body, life, and ultimately her heart, even though
she has been burned in the past. The
passion between these two burns as hot as a twelve-alarm fire from the very
beginning, even when they are forced to push the physical side of their relationship
to the back-burner, and there is no way anyone can miss the heat between them
the second they clap eyes on each other. I loved seeing Chloe and Ryan find
their way together and to an HEA, with all their enemies brought low, of course,
and I enjoyed seeing the HOT guys in action, even if it was only very
briefly. I am dying for the next book
already and cannot wait for the chance to snap it up. Lynn Raye Harris has a way of pulling readers
in and making you forget that you are not a member of this amazing team, until
the very last two words on the page, making us all dread… “THE END”.
*eARC provided by author for the
purpose of an honest and unbiased review.
No compensation was provided.
