SEAL the Deal by Kate Aster

Narrated by Tanya Eby

Tanya Eby is one of my favourite narrators and when choosing audiobooks, her name is often enough to hook me. I haven’t read or listened to any Kate Aster books before but I like romances featuring Navy SEALs (Suzanne Brockmann’s SEAL Team 16 and Troubleshooters series are favourites) and the description of SEAL the Deal, Special Ops: Homefront series book 1, looked fun. I knew I was in safe hands with the narration so it felt like less of a risk to try a new-to-me author.

Lacey Owens is the daughter of wealthy and high-powered (and snobby) parents. Her father is a bigwig in the financial sector. Lacey’s adopted sister, Vi, is the golden girl. She is goal driven and seems to achieve her targets easily. Lacey feels she never measures up to her sister and longs for approval from her parents rather than the ubiquitous longsuffering looks of disappointment. After trying a number of different careers, Lacey, now based in Annapolis, trained as a real estate agent. In an attempt to take a leaf out of her sister’s book, she crashes the funerals of wealthy people in the hope of scoring more business. The widow/er or relatives of the deceased often want to sell property and she wants to be the person whose face they know and whose business card they have.

That sounds incredibly mercenary but Lacey is terrible at it. Oh, she crashes the funerals alright, but she does impeccable research first and when she approaches the bereaved, she has a specific and kind word to say to them. She doesn’t pretend to know the deceased – she says she admired them and wanted to pay her respects (for example) and she doesn’t have a conversation about selling property while they’re lowering the casket into the grave. Added to that, half the time, she talks the bereaved person out of selling! Lacey is really good at helping people get through a difficult time but she lacks the killer instinct her sister apparently has and which is necessary for quick success in real estate. What might look like a mercenary move on her part ends up being a godsend to the people she meets – unfortunately, she doesn’t make much money this way.

She’s also sworn off men and sex while she gets her career off the ground. She thinks to model her sister’s actions in this regard. So, when she literally bumps into Lieutenant Commander Mick Riley at the funeral of his kind-of-surrogate-father, she resists their chemistry for a very long time.

Mick is a SEAL who wants to be deployed as much as possible. He doesn’t want to have a girlfriend or wife/family waiting for him when he’s away as he’s seen the toll it takes on relationships. He has been transferred to a training role in Annapolis, much to his disgust. He thinks it is a punishment for disrespecting his commanding officer and has every intention of making it back into the ‘teams’ as soon as possible.

Mick is attracted to everything about Lacey. She has befriended his kind-of-surrogate-mother (the widow of the deceased at whose funeral they met) and is generous with her time and genuinely kind. She’s also smart, funny and hot, with great legs. But Mick is a man of honour and when Lacey draws the line at “just friends” he will not make a move over it. Any change to that status will have to come from her.

Lacey rents a room in Maeve’s house. (Lacey and Maeve met at Lacey’s “first funeral” and Lacey convinced her not to sell her beloved grandmother’s house, but rather to move into it instead.) The other boarder is Bess, a young woman pregnant and running away from an abusive boyfriend. The three women each have some POV sections and it is clear that Maeve and Bess will have stories of their own in future.

Mick works closely with Jack, another navy officer and it ends up that the five hang out together regularly as Mick finds it easier to be “just friends” with Lacey in a group setting. Jack has interesting history with Maeve, it turns out.

The first part of the book is really bedding down the friendship between Mick and Lacey and the next section, quite a ways in, is where they take things to the next level. The sexytimes start then and, to be honest they felt a little too frequent when they finally turned up. If they’d be spread more evenly over the story I wouldn’t have that complaint but they felt a bit squished in here. Also, Mick must be superhuman because who can have sex three or four times a night, regularly, over the age of 30?? (Besides, isn’t there chafing? When do they sleep?)

Apart from the reasons behind Lacey being at the funeral where they met in the first place, the main conflict between Mick and Lacey is that he intends to return to the SEALs and he doesn’t believe she will want to live that life with him. I think both of these things are resolved in fairly predictable ways but the journey was entertaining enough so I didn’t mind.

Tanya Eby is one of my go-to narrators. Her voice is very pleasing to my ear and I like the way she delivers the emotion, tension and humour in a story. There were distinct voices for Lacey, Maeve and Bess, as well as for Vi and the other female characters.

The male cast was not as distinguishable – as much as I like her work, Ms. Eby does tend to have basically one “hero” voice and there was little separating Mick, Jack, Tyler or Joe. In the context of the book, I didn’t have trouble working out who was who but if I had a wish, it would be for Ms. Eby to develop some more variety here. (I have no idea if what I wish for is even possible however and by no means is Ms. Eby being singled out – I find this issue common among any number of female narrators.)

The production was crisp and clean, with only a couple of not-big-deal vocal errors.

All of the main characters were nice people and there was perhaps a touch of too much sugar in the book simply from all that niceness. While I didn’t race to finish, I enjoyed the book in an easy-listening comfortable kind of way.

Kaetrin

Narration: B

Book Content: B-

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: Minimal

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Tantor Audio

SEAL the Deal was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for a review.