GRR Reviews SEALed Bride: A Bad Boy Romance by B. B. Hamel

SEALed Bride is a "marriage of convenience" novel that happened to feature a Navy SEAL. Fortunately, there is no "SEAL abuse" in this novel (sending SEALs to do things they'd never do, like babysitting witnesses, or hostage rescue on US soil, or such) Instead, what you have was two barely sympathetic characters shacked up with each other and he realized this marriage ain't so fake after all.

Nash Bell has a best-selling war memoir based on his SEAL days, and women are practically throwing themselves at him daily, bad enough that his publicist is having conniptions trying to control his public image. Chafing at the control, Nash Bell decided to do one thing nobody expected... He's going to marry a girl named Selena in a marriage of convenience. Selena needed the money... Her father has cancer. And this "fake" marriage would only last a few months. And Nash needs to have a more... "wholesome" image. But Nash is having a hard time keeping his hands off his "wife"...

There are several factual problems, but they are rather minor (such as sudden "twist" at the end that Nash's publicist is not only a lieutenant, she's a SEAL team commander? Uh... SEAL team commander is an O-5 COMMANDER, not a lowly O-3 lieutenant, and there are no female members in Navy SEALs as of now ) The main problem here is Nash was portrayed as a "bad boy", but he's just... annoying and pushy. Is that what "bad boy" was supposed to be? As for Selena... she comes across as... to borrow another author's term... "white bread" (bland). She's sad (this is going to be over soon, her father is dying...) or just passive almost all the time, except when she's in bed sharing sexy times with Nash (which wasn't that often!)

In the end, I had a mild dislike for the book. I would have given it 2 stars, except I think a book featuring a SEAL but did not commit "SEAL abuse" should be rewarded, and I rather like "wag the dog" backstory (which I don't mind, and you'll know what I mean once you read the book). So I decided on the 3/5 rating

Category: Contemporary

Primary Plot: Bad Boy SEAL on publicity tour enters marriage of convenience with bland girl, and they fall in love anyway

Tropes: marriage of convenience, different worlds

Overall Rating: 3/5