TBR Challenge: TAYLOR'S TEMPTATION, by Suzanne Brockmann

Link to FictionDB

The topic of this month is Series Catch-Up (A book in a series you are behind on)

Published: 2001

Genre: Contemporary

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Tall, Dark and Dangerous, book 10

In March we have to look for a book in a series that we’re behind on.

It was in my TBR pile because I like Suzanne Brockmann books and as I had read a couple of her Tall, Dark & Dangerous series, I decided some months ago to read all the books in order. But somehow I lost my interest after book number 9. So thanks to this TBR Challenge I've finished the series now.

Bobby Taylor is a well-known character from the other books in the series. He's Wes Skell's best friend. Both Navy SEALs form an interesting couple that work very well together. The communicate each other with just a gesture or a look. So they are used to save each other’s live once and again.

The thing is that while recovering from an injury, Bobby is out of service, he cannot go to any op, so it’s the perfect person to go and try to make his best friend’s sister, Colleen, remains in the USA, instead of going to a dangerous country to help them because they’ve suffered an earthquake.

The problem is that Bobby Taylor has been in lust/love/whatever with Colleen  for a long time, since she was nineteen years old. And he is not aware that the same happens to her.

So, when this very big –Very. Six and a half feet at least- and attractive man comes to visit her, for once without her brother in cue, she sees it as the perfect chance. She tries to seduce him, in any way and form she can imagine. But he resists. So she tries again, bolder than she’s ever been with anyone. Taylor tries to resist de temptation. And he tries. Very hard. But, of course, sooner or later, they will just -explode. With passion and lust and love and everything else.

This was a Silhouette Intimate Moments, so you know what kind of book you’ve got in your hands. It revolves around the sentimental conflict among the main characters. And here we find one of those classical tropes –in love with our best friend’s sister. A topic that has always sounded me a little bit weird in relation to the feelings each man has for the other. I mean, could their friendship be something more? Are there sexual vibes that these macho men try to ignore? And do they redirect those feelings to a different person, someone who is so close to their friends? It didn’t help that Bobby saw his friend’s eyes in her eyes, for instance.

Anyway, this plot gives two conflicts: First, the best friend/brother is going to be against it, because he does not want to change his relationship with his friend or his sister. Bobby does not want to loose Wes as a friend, and that’s why he fights each step of the way. In the end he surrenders. Wes is going to kill him, but he’ll die happy.

But that’s not the only problem, because she is quite younger than him, ten years. She’s studing law. He thinks she deserves somebody with a better career, who earns more money, he doesn’t want her to have the worries and uncertainties of a military wife.

It’s a SIM, so there’s no real military suspense. This series is not like Troubleshooters, that includes a suspenseful subplot in each book. Here the part of adventures in foreign lands is very short and quite simplistic. Of course, you don’t read a Suzanne Brockmann book to learn about foreign affairs, but because of the incredible and powerful tension between the main characters.

This book is part of a series, but it stands alone rather well. The only problem is that if you haven’t read the previous books you just know that Wes and Bobb are friends, but when you have read the series up to this point, you are so used to the couple Bobby & Wes that it’s a little bit strange to see just one of them on stage.

Suzanne Brockmann is one of my favourite authors, and I will keep on glomming her backlist.

Just after I finished this book I went for the last one of the series. It’s Night Watch/ Wild, Wild Wes, the story of Wes, who’s been in love with a married woman for a long time. Suzanne paired him with Brittany, Mel’s sister. Mel was the main character, with Harlan Jones, in Everyday, Average Jones (1998), book 4 in the series.

Wes’s story was a 2-star book for me. It certainly didn’t help that I read it translated into Spanish. The problem was the dullness of the translation. Harlequin is not always very careful about this. It’s a pity how the sexual tension and the wonderful dialogues that Suzanne Brockmann can create fall flat when you read them in such a less than inspired version.