Saving Sarah was clearly "inspired by" the 2003 movie "Tears of the Sun" starring Bruce Willis and Monica Belucci, where a SEAL team was sent to the boonies to retrieve the doctor who does not want to go. However, this pastiche proceeds to separate the lieutenant from his men, and never mentioned his men again. Then screwed up SEAL combat and survival equipment in order to throw in some improbable scenarios.
The problem was almost immediately evident within the first few pages, where the Spanish phrases apparently came out of Google translate. A cartel member dropped off a wounded man who's clearly beyond help, and when no immediate treatment was forthcoming, he yelled "boludo concha!" as a curse. A South American would tell you that the two words don't really go together, and if they do, it would go as "concha boluda" (in Spanish, noun goes first, and feminine form ). This was clearly Google translated, and it was totally wrong because it only makes sense as an insult when it's translated back into English.
Furthermore, the plot was still nonsense because the lieutenant clearly has verbal communication problems. He knew the reason why the Doc was being evacuated (her father, the Admiral, is in poor health, and someone in the chain of command decided to, at considerable expense, to activate a SEAL team to drag her out of the jungle!) The Lieutenant failed to communicate this urgency with the Doctor and instead, let her run him and the team like cadets doing chores and waste an entire evening, and even the next morning, he failed to communicate this, or over the course of several DAYS! It wasn't until Chapter 4 did the author managed to ret-con that the lieutenant was ordered to retrieve the doc WITHOUT her aware of why. Again, this is NOT how SEAL team operates! They are not negotiators! They don't embed like Army A-Teams and mingle with the locals!
Also, where are the supplies? Clearly the SEAL team is not going to trust local water and food, yet they clearly didn't bring rations and water for days just to wait for the doctor to leave. Yet in Chapter 4 it was implied that the SEAL team brought several DAYS worth of MREs with them, as they were in the jungle for over a week! Also, a SEAL team always have a medic, and seems like this one doesn't! As the medic didn't help out with the doc! If not food and water, how about batteries for the radios and night-vis goggles and whatnot?
WARNING: The rest of this review should be considered SPOILERIFIC!
YES, I'll basically ruin the whole book. BEWARE!
Clearly, Doc Sarah here is basically doing ER work, yet triage procedure was wrong. Often, her only prescription was morphine, and morphine is NOT always called for in injuries, as it lowers blood pressure! If there is already massive blood loss, then morphine can make things worse!
The rest of the combat sequences reads like a bad movie script. Bad guys came to raid the camp (why?) The SEAL team can't spot the additional vehicles (1 vehicle spotted suddenly became 6-7) and attackers. Then the team members were never seen or heard from again. In fact, their names were never even mentioned, and the lieutenant seems to not worry about their fate at all.
The SEAL lieutenant no longer has his long gun after having the roof fall on him, but only has his sidearm (he holstered it), but he never seems to run out of ammunition (usually one only carries two magazines), but he somehow kept his backpack which included water and plenty of medical supplies, and enough MREs for two people for several days! SEAL don't carry sealed water... They carry water purification tablets!
Furthermore, a proper mission brief always includes a rendezvous point in case the team lost contact with each other near the objective. Yet clearly this lieutenant never planned one. So his only solution was to go back to the now-demolished hospital, and supposedly find the satellite shack, even though right at the beginning of the book it was mentioned that the storm had knocked out the comms.
Another part that begs belief was "honey as topical antibiotic". Research shows that only manuka honey, which came from New Zealand, acts as an effective antibiotic. Most honey in the world, including those in South America, would not work well as an antibiotic when diluted with fluids from the wound. This is "practically implausible", but I guess it's better than nothing, but why use that when it's standard knowledge that SEAL kit includes antibiotic ointment? It's easily Googled what a SEAL survival kit contained, including a Time.com article on such!
Anyway, the LT eventually killed enough bad guys and was able to rig the radio to summon help to rescue them both, kill a few more bad guys, have sexy times in the jungle, and they fell for each other. They got rescued. The end.
This wasn't the first novel where the author came up with some completely implausible scenario to separate the SEAL squad leader from the rest of his team (who basically abandoned him to his fate) so he can romance the FMC. Basically, you have a generic hot man acting alone after some contrived circumstances separated him from his team and he proceeds to woo and save the FMC. And I'm afraid this is more of the same. The SEALs don't act like SEALs, their equipment is not those of SEALs. This is almost a prime example of "SEAL Abuse" where the author basically imagined some generic romance scenarios and inserted navy SEALs into it. At least this book wasn't set in the US and have SEALs violate US laws (posse comitatus, look it up).
BTW, a lieutenant who lost his entire SEAL team like that will be court-martialed.
Category: Military, romantic suspense
Primary Plot: SEAL team leader, having gotten his team killed, still have to save the pretty doctor from bad guys
Tropes: family pressure, SEAL
Overall Rating: 1/5 (as low as it can go)
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