Night Watch, by Suzanne Brockmann

When Suzanne Brockmann's Night Watch (excerpt) came out, I was really anxious to read it, but it took so long to get here (and the one who got her copy first was a friend of mine), that I lost all sense of urgency, and I actually kept it around for a couple of weeks before I found the right mood to read it.

When U.S. Navy Seal Chief Wes Skelly was sent to L.A. on assignment, he agreed to go on a blind date with beautiful single mother Brittany Evans, sister-in-law of a fellow SEAL. After all, he had been secretly in love for years, albeit with a woman who belonged to another man. So what did he have to lose?

Plenty, it turned out. Because suddenly the woman he thought he could never have was available. However, so was Brittany -- and not only that, she was in danger. Because of him. He knew he could keep her safe. But why was he increasingly certain that he was the one in danger?

I think I'm a Suzanne Brockmann slut. I enjoy pretty much everything the woman writes, in any genre, with any plot.. it doesn't matter, I devour the book. Night Watch wasn't by any means her best, but I still liked it enough to give it a B+.

What I adored about the story was the way the relationship between Britt and Wes was developed. These two enjoyed each other, warts an all, and Brockmann was very successful in showing that. I love reading relationships like that. Also, usually I'm not fond of plots where the hero starts out in love with someone else (it's a little double standard of mine: I adore books where it's the heroine who is in love with someone else), but this one works well, basically because I really bought that Wes wasn't "settling" for Britt, he really was crazy about her, and not just sexually. At one point, he tells her that he loves being with her because she likes him even when he's not pretending to be a better behaved someone else, and I could just feel his delight in being with someone who actually liked him.

This element was good enought that it more than compensated for the problems I had with the plotting. Basically, I thought the book was a little bit too crowded by different subplots, and some of them came out underdeveloped, like the one about Dani and Britt's son Andy. It was an interesting one, don't get me wrong, but there just wasn't space for it here, and it got shortchanged. Actually, I would have also cut the suspense subplot, all that thing about the stalker, and concentrated on the Lana-Quinn thing. That one was the most important one, as far as I'm concerned, but it was crowded out by the very unoriginal stalker thingie.

Oh, and a final note: 5 foot 10 is supposed to be "short"?? And so much is made out of this supposed shortness? That's just ridiculous, that's not short, it's just average.