A SEAL Never Quits

May 27, 2019
Castillo (the Texas Legacy series) kicks off her Texas Navy SEALS series with the instant, fiery passion between a SEAL team commander and a veterinarian who finds herself a target of his most determined enemy. Lt. Amador “Stryker” Salas and his hand-picked SEAL team are assigned to assess rumors of a terrorist cell operating on the U.S.-Mexico border. They purchase a Texas cattle ranch to provide cover for their operation, and Stryker, usually intensely focused on his missions, finds an enticing distraction in local veterinarian Anya Gutierrez. Anya has faced plenty of hardship in her life, including the demands of her job; Stryker is the first man to make her feel thoroughly safe. But even as Stryker and his team infiltrate the Mexican drug cartels, cartel leader Benicio Davila learns about Stryker’s growing love for Anya and kidnaps her in order to lure the SEALs to a final showdown. The immediate attraction, hypermasculine lead, and imperiled heroine feel overly familiar, but Castillo constructs an intriguing corruption case for her SEALs to pursue that will keep readers eager for further revelations in future books.

June 15, 2019
A local veterinarian is caught up in the danger of an undercover Navy SEAL operation in this romantic suspense novel. Anya Gutierrez is quite familiar with ranching and taking care of cattle. When a group of six mysterious men move onto a ranching property in Hebbronville, Texas, Anya extends her help for the upcoming calving season. Amador "Stryker" Salas knows little about cattle, and, though he's wary of Anya poking around the ranch, he knows he'll have to play up his disguise as a retired bull rider-turned-rancher. The attraction between them is instantaneous despite Stryker's efforts to remain private. When the SEALs' mission takes them into Mexico to disrupt terrorist activity, the danger soon follows them back onto U.S. soil, putting Anya's life in jeopardy. Anya and Stryker fall in love rather quickly; their intimate scenes are broken up by complicated livestock births, assignment debriefings, and a kidnapping. The six Navy SEALs, all living together on one ranch, create a testosterone-laden, hypermasculine fraternity atmosphere. With Stryker's added obsession with Anya's virginity, referring to it as "the greatest gift" and even thanking Anya for "gifting" her body, the book feels archaic. A modern romance this is not. A lot of time is spent introducing the network of cartel characters and the SEALs' web of contacts, leaving Anya's background as a veterinarian who proudly owns her own clinic unexplored. More of a love letter to the military, patriotism, and ranching communities, this fails as a romance and leaves the heroine to simply become the trigger for the hero's protective instincts. Anya lacks agency and disappointingly plays the pawn in good versus bad, where only men pull the strings. A slew of unnecessary complications further muddies an already bizarre romantic setup.

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