Title:  A SEAL Forever
Series:  West Coast Navy SEALs #3
Author:  Anne Elizabeth
Genre:  Contemporary Romance, Military Romance
Published:  December 1, 2015
Publisher:  Sourcebooks Casablanca
My Rating:  3 stars
Source:  NetGalley
Cover Description:

Special Operator Declan Swifton was a dedicated U.S. Navy SEAL, a known player, and daredevil who loved pushing the limits. But on his last mission, an IED leaves him injured and angry as hell—and it changes everything.

When a loud crash disturbs his neighbor, Maura Maxwell, she assumes the sailor next door is up to his usual bad behavior. But the man she finds covered in glass is far from the cocky ladies’ man she’d grown to tolerate. Lying before her is a man fighting to rediscover his place in the world—and he can’t do it alone.

Read on for my thoughts on A SEAL Forever.  No true spoilers, promise.

A SEAL Forever is one of those stories that when I picked it up on NetGalley I fully expected to love it.  I liked it.  It was a basically good story, but I never really connected with either Declan nor Maura the way I wanted to.

My difficulty actually began with the cover blurb when the hero is given the name Declan Smith.  Okay you say, so you didn’t like the book because of the guy’s name… no.  I felt disjointed on the story when in the first line of the book it states: “Master Chief Declan Swifton of SEAL Team FIVE rolled over the side of the Rigid-hulled Inflatable Boat and slid soundlessly into the Pacific Ocean.”  Do you see it?  Smith/Swifton    So, yes I changed his name in the blurb here on my blog to the name in the book.

(and seriously, someone needs to consider rewriting that blurb)

Maybe that’s a small thing.  But it was the start of feeling disconnected with this story – along with other things along the way.  Scenes switch abruptly with no clear idea of what finished the previous scene.  If it were memories placed within a paragraph I’d accept it – but to be tossed from the present to the future totally unexplained in the middle of some, I consider, important scenes… again it was distracting and disjointed.

The romance between Declan and Maura was good, I definitely felt their connection once past the early part of the story.  And Declan as Maura’s rock was pleasantly reversed with Maura as Declan’s rock later on in the story.  It is what serious, committed couples do.  They stand for each other no matter what.

I simply could not connect to the story or the characters.  I found it impossible, for me, to fall into their world and experience it.

Any reviewer’s opinion is different – after all, we are simply readers who are talking about a story we read, so everyone will react differently to each story.  For me, this was a good story that I liked.  Nothing more, nothing less.  You may pick it up and discover an entirely different reaction to this story – and that’s what reading is all about isn’t it?  Finding the stories that take us away into another world for a brief amount of time.

I liked A SEAL Forever, I simply didn’t love it.

*I received an e-ARC of A SEAL Forever from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not change what I think of this novel.*

Available in paperback and for the Kindle