A SEAL Never Quits

Undercover on a Texas ranch with his tight-knit Navy SEAL team, Lieutenant Amador “Stryker” Salas and their assignment requires all their skills, all their secrets and all their know-how. The local veterinarian, Amya Gutierrez loves animals and the ranching life and when she becomes caught in the crosshairs of a mission gone sideways, Stryker must risk everything to keep her out of harm’s way, even if it destroys him.

The first book in an exciting new Navy SEAL series is off to a great start with a host of wonderfully sexy cowboy SEALs, thrilling suspense and a sweet romance. The characters are strong, compelling and easily grab readers’ attentions and the chemistry between Stryker and Anya is off the charts sizzling. The relationship between them however is complicated the secrets that he keeps and the heroine is spunky and keeps a level head about her when things go wrong, making it her very likeable.

The plot is a complex, multi-faceted web of intrigue and bad guys and while a little on the slow side, there is lots of suspense and excitement as surprising twists causes some very deadly changes in the team’s mission. They have been tasked with covert ops across the border that has enemies popping up everywhere, betrayals, traitors, and danger flowing from the pages and readers wanting to know more.

A Seal Never Quits by Holly Castillo features an alpha male hero deluxe—Stryker—and a small-town veterinarian named Anya. Their chemistry is excellent and Styker’s journey to opening himself up to love is nice. Most exception is that Anya is no shrinking violet heroine. I won’t give any spoilers, but she can think on her feet.

A SEAL Never Quits is the first in a new romantic suspense series. I never figured to find a bunch of SEALs in Texas but that’s where their undercover mission takes them. Stryker is the guy in charge. He has done the marriage thing and failed miserably. He is married to the Navy now and couldn’t be happier. That is until he meets feisty Dr. Anya Gutierrez, the local veterinarian. She stirs up feelings he thought long dead.
This story takes us hopping over the border between the US and Mexico fighting a new high tech cartel. This is a sweet story filled with action, intrigue and love.

This is the first book in a wonderful new series There are a few series around where we have undercover seals appearing to be something in this case they are working on a ranch but at the same time they are working to bring down the drug cartels and find out how they are evading authorities

Lieutenant Amador “Stryker” Salas is the leader of this band of undercover Seals and he and his men are determined to stop what could be a terrorist plot. He is deeply attracted to Anya Gutierrez the local vet who cares for the animals on the ranch. The feeling is mutual but Stryker doesn’t want to get involved in case it blows his cover They are also total opposites he is buttoned down and serious from the dark work that he has done while she is sunny and sweet But when danger threatens her Stryker will not only tell her his secret mission but will go all out to keep her safe. This is a fairly quick read but there is plenty of drama and suspense to keep you engaged throughout Looking forward to more books in what looks like a great series

A SEAL Never Quits is the first novel in the Texas Navy SEALs series by new-to-me author, Holly Castillo, and while this romantic suspense novel was fairly well-written, and held my interest for the most part, there were a number of issues that I had with this novel, which is why I am giving it a 2-star rating.

The basic premise of of this novel, and I suppose the ones which will follow it, is that a team of six top-notch Navy SEALs are to be stationed on a ranch in small-town Texas, pretending to be ranchers while keeping an eye out for drug traffic coming into Texas from Mexico, Central and South America. My first issue was why send Navy SEALs? Their superior officer is Admiral Haslett. Shouldn’t this mission have been given to the DEA, the U.S. Marshalls, and/or the Texas Rangers? I don’t think ranching is what Navy SEALs are best at or trained to do. Then there’s the issue sending 6 hunky SEALs to the same ranch in a small Texas town, pretending to be ranchers, as if they won’t be noticed–they have no wives, no children, just 6 men, and if it happened in my town, I know I’d find it suspicious.

My next problem was the ranch itself, completely enlarged, improved and sprawling, its massive size disguised by heavy plantings around it–just the kind of thing an intruder would use as cover, which someone obviously does later in the novel. Every hideout and safe house I’ve ever heard or read about usually has very few plants or trees surrounding it, so that no one can possibly approach it without being seen, so the excessive plantings also didn’t make any sense to me. The leader of this group goes by the name Stryker, no reason given for that moniker, or for the other 5 men in the group, who also don’t use their given names, instead we have Buzz, Phantom, Santo, Snap and Brusco, and again, no explanations about their names, and it’s something I’d find rather suspicious too.

The first person we meet in this novel is the local veterinarian, Doctor Anya Gutierrez, who shows up at the ranch to introduce herself to the new owner and occupants, the first being Stryker, who explains that he’d been traveling the rodeo circuit but had wandered enough and wanted to get back to cattle ranching, and she offers her services to accompany Stryker to upcoming cattle auctions, and when he asks her why, she explains to him that the cattle on his ranch are all purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle, so that’s the only breed he should be buying, yet she didn’t appear to wonder why this rodeo/rancher didn’t even know the breed or bloodlines of his own cattle.

Which brings us to one more problem I had. Stryker is quite taken with Anya and she with him, almost instantly, although they barely know anything about each other, and these two characters aren’t twenty-somethings, they are closer to thirty-somethings, and, when a very short time later, they have sex, and yes it’s graphic, I was as surprised as Stryker to learn that Anya was still a virgin, yet she didn’t give any indication of that or let him know before having sex with him–as a doctor of veterinary medicine, shouldn’t she have had a clue that letting him know beforehand might have saved her some pain? Of course, she refers to their first sexual encounter as making love, and Stryker is somewhat taken aback because to him it was casual sex, only he later says he doesn’t do casual sex and hasn’t had sex since he and his wife divorced several years earlier, primarily because she wanted a husband who’d be there and not off on some mission he couldn’t discuss. The next morning, Stryker is somewhat freaked out and gives Anya the cold shoulder about it and Anya simply leaves, wondering what she did wrong. It doesn’t take long before they have sex again and this time she tells him she loves him. I’m sorry, but these are two people who barely know one another, and as romance novels go, this one just didn’t work for me.

What did work for me was plan to infiltrate and take down the leader of a very elusive and very deadly drug kingpin. Stryker and two of his men head to Mexico to do so, and their mission is fraught with danger and violence, and the kingpin they want to take down isn’t a fool, making their mission even more dangerous. They are masquerading as Mexicans, but prior to leaving Texas, they’ve received a mysterious envelope containing photographs of Stryker, all of his team, and even Anya. It’s obvious someone knows what they’re up to and somehow managed to get past their complex security measures to take these photographs. Yet once they know this, why send them to Mexico in make-up, phony tattoos and hair gel, pretending to be be Mexicans, rather than sending actual Mexicans instead? Again, I found it really hard to believe that they wouldn’t be found out immediately, but at least their mission gave some forward momentum to the plot, adding to the suspense and danger they faced, and be forewarned, there is plenty of graphic violence and more graphic sex to come.

I do think this novel had many possibilities, but in this reader’s opinion, the went unrealized. The heroine never really impressed me. I felt that she was rather bland and boring and couldn’t see what Stryker found so appealing about her. Part of the problem was the lack of character development–and that problem also existed for the hero and the rest of his team as well. Anya somewhat redeems herself near the end of this novel, which, in addition to having an HEA ending, also includes something else I dislike–a cliffhanger, because the kingpin they took down in this novel had connections higher up the chain of command, and there also might be a mole among the Admiral’s staff.

I’m sure that we’ll find out more about this mystery mole in the next installment of this series, which I’m sure will feature another member of this same SEAL team, but I do hope the author and her editors or beta readers point out the parts of that next novel that made little sense to this reader in this one, because they clearly missed many of them.

I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.