Genre: Contemporary

Number of words: 6,660

Average Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Stars

My rating: 1/5 stars

Jolene Franks and Sam Caldwell have been ready to get married for a year. But thanks to both of them fanning out, the wedding was postponed. Up to now. Finally, they can take a break from the military long enough for a honeymoon, but they will never stop being patriots in the service of their country.

This book could have been so good. There’s a spectacular military heroine, a long-awaited reunion, and even some (almost) fiery sex scenes, as well as a honeymoon in Hawaii. Oh yeah, this book had potential, and that’s probably why I’m so mad at it right now.

I don’t even know where to start with this crazy storm of horror. There’s the hasty love story, the barrage of characters at the end (because this is just an introductory novel to the “real” books in the series, with the other characters), and the patriotic morality that goes down my throat.

There is no reason this story should be less than at least 15,000 words. It was all so rushed that I couldn’t even care about Jolene and Sam when they got married. Then the Hawaii honeymoon was overlooked. And trust me, you don’t miss a Hawaii honeymoon. Forever. I don’t care how quiet it is, you don’t go from flight to flight without at least mentioning a romp between the sheets, or a luau, or something in between.

The sex scenes in this story might have been good, but for some reason they just weren’t, not even when the two of them joined the mile-high club. Maybe because the writing style wasn’t my favorite, or I just wasn’t that attached to the characters, but they weren’t. I didn’t get an ounce of pleasure from these scenes and they took up about half the story.

The other half appeared to be patriotic propaganda. There was a lot of it. At least four patriotic songs were played and everywhere I look it is mentioned that there is nothing as patriotic as serving your country, and how they are so proud to be patriots, and it is sexy when you jump down the throat of someone who says America Is not perfect. It is as if the author uses a military recruitment poster as a writing guide and publishes it as is.

Do not misunderstand. Total respect for the troops. And the United States is not even close to being the worst country in the world to live in. But it is not Narnia either. There are many problems in America, including the large number of homeless veterinarians. So having all these “patriotic” characters pissed me off.

I understand this will be a series about a family that loves the military, but that doesn’t mean that the story should be preached. There could have been a lot more character development to balance the patriotism and then it wouldn’t have been a problem for me. But as it is now, the main characters are as deep as an Uncle Sam poster and I can feel the moral of the story hitting my head as hard as a two-by-four and it’s not a good feeling.

Morale is totally fine in the stories. In small doses. If it is obvious enough that it affects the story, then there is a problem. The patriotic moral here is more blatant than the moral in the beginner chapter books you used to read to a child. The moral should be much more subtle for an audience old enough to know what a blowjob is.