It's been a while since I've read any Suzanne Brockmann - my TBR list is bonkers and unless I fall utterly in love with an author I don't religiously read their every work - but I remember her books as being solid romantic suspense with sexy heroes, strong heroines and hot love scenes. So when I spotted this one on NetGalley I figured I'd pick it up. Should be a nice solid read to counter the run of eye-burningly awful ones I've had in the last couple of weeks, I thought.
Well.
Look, it wasn't bad.
But that's kind of damning with faint praise for an author as well-known as Brockmann, isn't it? And faint praise is about all I can muster, because about three days later, I'm having to wrack my brains to remember the names of the principal characters. The hero's jailbait daughter and her older boyfriend were far more interesting than the Navy SEAL and his neighbourly girlfriend.
There were some hefty info-dumps about the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, which while quite intriguing to those interested in history, also came off as lecturing. Including subject matter which the author finds interesting is all very well but you have to find a way to make it interesting to the reader, and we saw Manzanar through the eyes of a teenage girl who saw it not as the national disgrace it is and the site of the internment of some of her family members, but as a possible place to hide out from trouble. It made it hard to care, about Manzanar and about the character who just came off as a disrespectful little brat by that point.
Brockmann also falls into the series trap many authors fall into of including characters from her previous books (which is fine) but making whole chunks of the book actually about them and told from their PoV (which is not). I didn't give a toss about Izzy Zanella, whoever he was. If you're writing a long-running series, you need to make it new-reader-friendly. Or even old-reader-who-missed-that-book-friendly, because otherwise the reader can get the feeling of having just stumbled into an exclusive club where everyone but you knows the secret handshakes.
One other thing which as an author I found really problematic; Shayla, the MFC of the book, is a romance author who has conversations out lout with Harry, one of her characters who lives in her head.
This isn't the funny, quirky, charming trait of authors it was made out to be. A lot of authors do differ psychologically from the majority of the population and our mental issues aren't something to make a joke of. Not cool, Ms. Brockmann. Not cool at all.
Some Kind Of Hero has its good moments; the love scenes were as hot as I expected and Peter and Maddie were very believable as the estranged father and daughter trying to come to terms with each other. At the end of the day, though, I can't say any more than 'it was okay', and therefore I'm giving it 3 stars.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through NetGalley.