Opening Line: "The shriek of the bolt being drawn in the cell block door shattered the sultry afternoon silence."

Opening Line: “Manny Ortega awoke from a dead sleep.”

Opening Line:" It was a cold day in hell for Tech Sergeant Wade Rocha--standard ops for a mission in Alaska."

Opening Line:"Gunfire rained down on the four-man SEAL squad, ricocheting off the concrete floor and metal walls of the warehouse in Pyongyang Harbour, North Korea.”

Navy SEAL Gabe Renault has no memory of the last three years. He doesn’t remember the mission that went wrong landing him in a North Korean prison camp and he certainly doesn’t remember having a wife and teenage daughter. And while the scars on his body tell a tale of torture he has no idea what they did to him or if he eventually broke, betraying his country. The doctors tell him he has PTSD and that given time his memories will return, but he knows the brass are also thinking the amnesia may just be a convenient way to cover up his disgrace at giving up government secrets. Meanwhile he’s been placed on disability leave, given a cocktail of drugs, and told to go home to his family, a family he doesn’t remember.

After Gabe was presumed dead Helen Renault did her best to pull the pieces of her and her daughters life back together. It wasn’t really all the that difficult, Gabe had never been home, always off on some mission and then even when he was he was he’d been distant, secretive and abrupt. Now she’s standing on her own two feet, with friends, a job she loves and a life. When the call comes in telling her Gabe is alive Helen decides that she’ll help him through his recovery but then she wants a divorce. What she hadn’t counted on was that the man returning is nothing like the Gabe she remembers, this is a man she could lose her heart to and spend the rest of her life loving.

With Gabe’s memories coming back Helen puts her heart under lock and key fearing it will only be a matter of time before the “old Gabe” re-emerges and breaks it again. Of course the men trying to kill him and his returning knowledge of government treason may put an end to their second chance at love before it begins anyways.

This is the first book from Marliss Melton’s SEAL team 12 series and also my first from this author. As a whole this was a great read, kinda Suzanne Brockmann-ish as it's more romantic then suspenseful but well written with a slowly unravelling storyline, lots of great secondary characters and a reunited lovers theme which is one of my fav’s. I did have a problem with some of the dialogue being stilted or age inappropriate, as was the case with the teenage daughter and unfortunately the ending went off into silly land but I will definitely be continuing on with the series. Hoo-yah, another SEAL team to get to know. 

Opening Line: " He'd hoped if he drank enough the night before he'd sleep right through today."

Ex-Navy SEAL Ethan Kelly is hangover again, it's been a year since his wife Rachael was killed in a plane crash in South America and he can't seem to move on, the pain as fresh as the day she died. Ethan has cut himself off from his large family and refuses to have anything to do with his brother's top secret business, that of KGI (Kelly Group International) With their expensive military backgrounds the Kelly brother's are essentially guns for hire taking the tricky jobs the government can't and specializing in intelligence recovery and hostage/kidnap victim extractions.

On the anniversary of Rachael's death Ethan receives an unmarked package containing surveillance pictures and maps of a drug cartel base camp in Columbia. The photos show something else too, a woman who looks very much like his late wife. Ethan doesn't think anyone will believe him but of course he now has to try and find her. Good thing most of his family is in the victim recovery business and handy with a gun because he's heading into the jungle and getting his wife back.

But Rachael's not the woman he knew a year ago; forcibly addicted to drugs, and suffering from memory loss and PTSD she may never fully recover and just because he's got her back Stateside doesn't mean she's safe either, the bad guys still want her dead. And then there's that little matter of the divorce papers.

There were parts of this book that I loved and others that I struggled with but all in all this was a really good romantic suspense. Banks writes an awesome tortured hero and although I did get tired of Ethan constantly "dropping to his knees" in front of Rachael and thanking or apologizing to everyone now that he's stopped self medicating, I loved that he was man enough to shed a few tears (that bathtub scene killed me)

One of my biggest issues here however was Rachael's extreme closeness to the brothers; it was just a little too intimate. They were forever enfolding her in their arms and cooing "Baby" and "Sweet Pea" and I guess because I've read some of Banks erotica I kept waiting for her to get it on with at least 3 of the 6 Kelly boys which distracted me from Ethan and Rachael's rekindled love story as well as creating several weird, ick moments. There was also the issue of Rachael having been adopted and brought up by the Kelly parents in the same house as her husband to be. Why was that little bit of info necessary? Wouldn't that kind of make everyone related? Another ick moment.

I also found that there were just too many Kelly brothers to keep track of properly and before long stopped even trying. Except for Garrett and Sam (who I'm sure were just trying to get lucky) they all sort of blended together along with the Kelly parents and a side story involving a runaway girl named Rusty that I can only assume we'll see more from in later books. I'll be continuing on with the series of course :)