Friday, April 29, 2016

Book Review: SEAL Shorts, Book of Firsts: SEAL Brotherhood Shorts by Sharon Hamilton

Title: SEAL Shorts, Book of Firsts: SEAL Brotherhood Shorts
Author: Sharon Hamilton
Published: November 6th, 2015 
Purchase Links: Amazon ♥ Goodreads

This book contains the first chapter of the first 11 Navy SEAL Romance novels by NYT and USA Bestselling author Sharon Hamilton: Accidental SEAL, Fallen SEAL Legacy, SEAL Under Covers, SEAL The Deal, Cruisin' For A SEAL, SEAL My Destiny, SEAL of my Heart, SEAL's Promise, SEAL My Home, SEAL's Code and Band of Bachelors: Lucas. Bonus material contains first chapters to three SEAL Brotherhood Series novellas: SEAL Encounter, SEAL Endeavor and True Blue SEAL


MY REVIEW: I'm a big fan of Sharon's and her books were some of the first military romances that I had ever read. Once I read one of her books, I become addicted to military romances. Sharon Hamilton had opened this big world up to me that I hadn't know anything about. 

Needless to say, I read one military romance after another after I discovered this genre and it's one reason why I love what Sharon has done with this book. Taking the first chapter from some of her greatest books, Sharon teases readers and leaves them craving for more. Some of these books, like Band of Bachelors: Lucas, for example, I had never read before and once I had read one chapter I needed to one-click. 

For anyone who has not read a Sharon Hamilton book before or a military romance, the Seal Brotherhood Shorts is perfect for you! Even if you have never picked up one or the other before, by the time you read a few of these, you'll be one-clicking away and fully immersed in the world of SEALs! 



Accidental SEAL

Christy Nelson embarks on her new career in Real Estate by holding her first open house. Entering the wrong house, by accident, she finds the nude sleeping body of a young man. 

Navy SEAL Kyle Lansdowne, on a mission to find his AWOL Team buddy, is staying at his buddy’s home while investigating the disappearance. When someone breaks in, he takes protective measures. He doesn’t expect to find that a beautiful young woman is responsible for his teammate’s abduction. 

What starts out as a meeting by accident becomes a hot affair neither one is ready for. Kyle is conflicted about getting Christy involved in his mission, but his hand is forced when he learns the same San Diego gang responsible for his teammate’s abduction has kidnapped her. 

Battling a cadre of dirty law enforcements hell-bent on getting military equipment, especially state-of-the-art firepower, Kyle is forced to admit that he would die to protect her.


Fallen SEAL Legacy

Nebraska born and bred Navy SEAL Calvin “Coop” Cooper, after his own family has perished in a tornado, is ordered to meet the family of a prominent San Diego psychiatrist. The doctor’s brother is a fallen SEAL medic who died in Grenada. There, Cooper meets Libby Brownlee, the beautiful niece of this fallen hero. Heavily influenced by her father, “We don’t speak military here,” is her comment about the military in general, and the SEAL community in particular. 

What starts out as a frosty debate between two people privately dealing with their own personal grief, turns into a passionate affair neither expected. Just as Cooper realizes perhaps Libby is the woman he’s always been looking for, she is snatched out from under him by a psychopathic killer bent on revenge. 

Cooper, along with his buddies in SEAL Team 3, use their training to find Libby, but it might be too late. Will Cooper be able to survive the loss of the woman he loves, or will his duty, honor and self sacrifice be enough to keep her safe?


 SEAL Under Covers

Navy SEAL Armando Guzman has just returned from a difficult tour in Afghanistan only to find his sister still making choices that land her in the company of a San Diego drug gang. Vowing he will save her from the bad environment she has placed herself in, he is blindsided by his sister’s hotter-than-hot best friend, Gina. 

Gina Mancuso is working her first under cover detail, trying to prove herself on a male-dominated police force, even if it means she has to work side by side with the SDPD officer with whom she had a brief, abusive relationship. She is not prepared for the chemical attraction that slams her against the hard body of her subject’s Navy SEAL brother, Armando. Their hot affair not only threatens to ruin her mission, but could engulf Armando in a career-ending dispute with local law enforcement. 

Armando is unwilling to walk away from his sister, especially as tensions rise between he and Gina’s ex-lover. Gina is in a race for time to keep her secret identity from the man she is now sure she loves with all her heart. But will she have to sacrifice their relationship in order to accomplish the mission she was sent to do?


 SEAL The Deal

Special Operator Nick Dunn gets the call he has been dreading since before his last deployment. His sister is in her final stages of cancer. He and his Team 3 roommate drive up to Sonoma County from Coronado to help her shut down her failing nursery business and tie up her final affairs. 

Nick only vaguely remembers Devon Brandeburg, his sister’s best friend, but boy has she grown up. Last time he saw her was five years ago when he graduated BUD/s and completed SEAL qualification to obtain his Trident. Sparks begin to fly between the two of them, but not in the normal way for Nick. The woman wants nothing to do with him. 

Devon Brandeburg has created a small financial fortune through her success in real estate. Her career is her main focus, but a closely guarded secret is her total lack of experience with men. After all, who needs them? Especially when their testosterone-stuffed egos suck all the air out of the room, like Nick’s does. 

Nick’s sister requires two things of the both of them as her dying wish. 1. Nick and Devon must find a buyer for the nursery together, not allowing to her nasty winery owner neighbor next door to get his hands on her piece of heaven. 2. They date at least five times before she passes on. 

What starts as a deathbed promise turns out to be a hot affair neither one expected. Nick becomes Devon’s teacher in her journey to womanhood. As she comes alive in his arms, the student brings the teacher something he’s never allowed himself to want, and now knows he needs. 

As his sister's life is ending a sinister plot to take over her property comes alive. Nick finds out both the women he holds most dear to him are in jeopardy. He's too late to save one of them, but will he be able to save the other? 


 Cruisin' For A SEAL

Mark Beale and several of his brothers from SEAL Team 3 board a cruise ship to bury a fallen buddy's ashes at sea. A risky affair with a beautiful Italian the night before they leave begins to ease his survivor’s guilt. 

Sophia Negri, suffering jitters over her engagement, falls for the handsome SEAL and pretends she speaks no English, letting their bodies do the talking. When Mark finds her on the ship and learns Sophia is half American, he is angry at first, but falls for her all over again as they set sail. 

Terrorists take over the ship and hold the passengers for ransom, Mark and the other SEALs are the only ones who can stop the plot. Will Mark’s actions be enough to save Sophia or will he have to sacrifice himself to save the woman he loves? 


SEAL My Destiny

This book can be read as a stand alone or out of sequence. Portions of this book appeared in an anthology. This is the expanded and enhanced full length version. 

Navy SEAL Luke Paulsen, on the verge of PTSD stemming from the death of his fiancée and a brutal tour overseas, knows he is damaged goods and unsuitable for relationships. While paying respects to a fallen comrade, he is unprepared for the chemical attraction he feels for the carefree dark-haired beauty playing in the surf one evening. 

Julie Christensen befriends the troubled SEAL, motivated by her yearning to soothe the young man’s troubled soul. Fueled by intense mutual desire, they succumb to one night of mind-numbing passion. Afterwards, he is unable to shed the memory of his lost love and disappears. 

When they meet again at a wedding that will forever bring their two families together, their passion and longing for one another forces them to confront their pasts in order to find a future together. 
But soon the trauma of his service separates them. Julie goes back to teaching and Luke deploys for North Africa with SEAL Team 3. Upon his return, he receives a frantic call that Julie's life is in danger. Will he make it in time to save the woman he now knows he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with?


SEAL of my Heart

Kate Morgan is engaged to the most eligible bachelor in Sonoma County, the son of a wealthy wine family in Healdsburg, California. On a flight to visit her sister in Portland she is seated next to a young hard-bodied elite soldier who ignites her insides in a strange attraction she cannot deny. 

Navy SEAL Tyler Gray plans to spend a weekend home before deploying to North Africa with the rest of his SEAL Team 3. But the conversation with Kate has him rethinking his future. 

The encounter has both of them feeling fate has stepped into their lives and altered their course. Unable to just say goodbye as lovers, they agree to carry on a correspondence. Kate becomes the girl Tyler wants to come home to while she is pressured by her family to reconsider her broken marriage plans. 

Family secrets are revealed from the past regarding a young Marine and Kate’s mother which brings both heartache and a sense of clarity as old loves are unearthed. From the grave, a Marine’s love letters from the past affect the new love between Kate and Tyler in the present. And when Kate’s life is endangered, will Tyler be the man to save her without sacrificing his own? 


 SEAL's Promise

Special Operator T.J. Talbot had watched from afar as his best friend married the love of his life. Raised in and out of the foster care system and nearly ruining his chance to become a SEAL, he figured his Happily Ever After would never be. But Dr. Death plays a heartbreaking trick on him and he winds up being the man’s father confessor, where he makes a promise to the dying SEAL to look after his friend’s wife and baby. 

Back in the states, Shannon Moore is grateful for the baby she is carrying, though she is a constant reminder of the man who no longer lives at her side. She is not ready for the attention from the community she receives, especially from T.J. She’s decided to honor her fallen husband by giving her whole life to the child he left behind. 

Recovering from his wounds, Talbot is plagued by the depth of the wounds he still carries inside him, as he tries to perform a mission he wishes he was not given. Rebuffed at every turn, he struggles but understands his promise might not be able to be fulfilled. He does not want to take what was never given to him in the first place. 

But what starts out as an improbable love story begins to bloom and grow. When Shannon and the child are endangered, he will not quit fighting for the family he now knows he was meant to love forever.



SEAL My Home

Bad boy Rory Kennedy was raised in foster care, bouncing in and out of trouble along the way. He finds his true family and real brothers as a Navy SEAL, one of the Navy’s elite warriors. When his BUD/S instructor barked the SEAL’s Motto: Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, he knew he had found home. 

Megan Palmer works in a bookstore and finds her passion in life through reading steamy romance novels. Her brief affair with a man she later found out was married has left her damaged, until she meets the handsome SEAL, who stands ready to open her world and give her things she’s only dreamed. 

On a skiing trip, Rory suffers a possible career-ending injury and also comes face to face with a past he never knew of, and a family who had abandoned him. His relationship with Megan is tested to the breaking point as Rory wades through the dark waters of recovery and whether or not he can live without the life he loves. A home-grown terrorist cell forces his hand and he discovers his true purpose.


SEAL's Code

Danny Begay has tried to drive out the voices of his ancestors for most of his young life, but the life springing from his Navajo roots will not die. He is summoned back to Arizona to visit his dying grandfather, one of the original Navajo Code Talkers. Ashamed he has disappointed his hero grandfather he buries himself one more time in the arms of a stranger before he goes back to his home in Northern California. 

Luci Tohe teaches at the reservation school, safeguarding the health of her ailing mother and little sister’s future, at the temporary expense of her own. She doesn’t expect the young Dine warrior she meets to be anything but a distraction from her loneliness. She knows she will dream about their hot encounter for years. 

Danny cleans his life up, joins the Navy and becomes a SEAL, where he becomes the man he knew he was destined to become. Between deployments, he goes back visit the girl he cannot get out of his mind. The reservation has become a dangerous place for Luci’s family and soon Danny is embroiled in not only saving Luci, but her whole family as well. 


Band of Bachelors: Lucas. 

Special Operator Lucas Shipley thought his living arrangement was temporary, since getting booted from the house by his wife. He sleeps on a couch in the apartment with four other divorced Navy SEALs, thinking he’ll get the call to come home any day. He ignores the not-so-helpful advice his buddies are giving him about marriage, women and romance. Until he gets served with divorce papers. 

Realtor Marcy Gelland is hired by Lucas’ soon-to-be ex-wife to liquidate all their real estate holdings and help her orchestrate a speedy departure from Lucas’ life. Based on what the hot-headed SEAL wife has told her, Marcy understands Lucas deserves every ounce of pain coming his way. 

But when Marcy and Lucas are left alone together in a remote Northern California woods, they ignite a personal bonfire that threatens to burn down the whole forest. Marcy is forced to see she is wrong about Lucas. 

Amidst the backdrop of hardened bachelor SEALs with their unsolicited, anti-long-term relationship advice, and a terrorist training camp operating nearby, Lucas must do what he’s always done: be the hero and save the day. But will it be in time to save Marcy? 



Bonus material contains first chapters to three SEAL Brotherhood Series novellas: SEAL Encounter, SEAL Endeavor and True Blue SEAL


ABOUT SHARON HAMILTON 
Sharon Hamilton is a NYT and USA Today bestselling author most known for her SEAL Brotherhood series.
Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany are not like any vamps you've read before, since they don't have to go to ground and can walk around in the full light of the sun.
Sharon's Guardian Angels struggle with the human charges they are sent to save, often escaping their vanilla world of Heaven for the brief human one. You won't find any of these beings in any Sunday school class.
All of Sharon's books are available on eBooks (most formats), print and Audible.
A lifelong organic gardener, Sharon lives with her husband in the Wine Country of Northern California, where most of her stories take place. When she's not writing, she's getting verra verra dirty in the mud or wandering Farmer's Markets looking for new Heirloom varieties of vegetables and flowers.
SHARON'S LINKS
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