I discovered Suzanne Brockmann last year with Get Lucky, and after spending much of last year catching up on the other books and the series, I was eagerly anticipating this one. I wasn’t disappointed. It has all the Brockmann trademarks readers have come to expect – a fun romance, action, humor, and of course, a SEAL hero. In some ways Taylor’s Temptation also seemed like a bit of a departure, because it was somewhat hotter than I was expecting, and the heroine was even more appealing than the hero.

Wes Skelly and Bobby Taylor have been best friends ever since they were swim buddies in BUD/S training, so when Wes asks Bobby to go talk his sister Colleen out of taking a dangerous trip to an unstable country, Bobby goes right out to Boston to help his friend. He knows it isn’t going to be easy to talk her out of it. Colleen is determined to visit Tulgeria so she can provide humanitarian aid to earthquake victims. But Bobby is even more afraid of his long-standing attraction to Colleen. He’s had a thing for her for years, but he knows he’s not the type of man Wes would want his sister to marry. Although Bobby is Wes’s best friend, he wants his sister to marry someone with a normal life – not a SEAL whose job is dangerous and nearly all-consuming.

Resisting Colleen turns out to be even more difficult than Bobby imagined, because she returns his feelings and is determined to act on them. As soon as she figures out that Bobby is attracted to her, she sets out to convince him to ignore his guilt and become her lover. Bobby is very reluctant to give in. Not only does it feel like he is betraying his best friend; he also shares Wes’s view that Colleen deserves someone who can give her a normal life. But Colleen has other ideas, and eventually both of them are thinking that they want their relationship to be more than just a brief fling.

I expected to like this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. Bobby is a worthy hero, and Brockmann does a great job of portraying his point of view. But while I am usually much more intrigued by the heroes of her novels, in this case it was Colleen that really interested me. She was idealistic and determined, but also a little insecure about her body. She came across as both innocent and bold. Colleen’s personality also made this book somewhat hotter than the other books in the series. I was surprised to find a very sensual phone sex scene, and there are a couple of other love scenes as well that were hotter than what I had come to expect from Brockmann.

Some of the best scenes in the book come when Wes makes the inevitable discovery that his best friend and his sister are sleeping together. Maybe these scenes would be tense if we didn’t already know that the ending would be happy. But since Bobby and Colleen’s marriage (and Wes and Bobby’s renewed friendship) is a given, these scenes are just really funny. The other SEALs get involved in the action as well, and at least two of them (Wes and another one named Spaceman) are clearly being groomed for future releases. I would have liked to see even more of them, but most of this book takes place in Boston without the rest of the Alpha squad.

While I really enjoyed the book, I did feel like it took Bobby and Colleen a little too long to confess their feelings to each other. At the beginning of the book they already have known each other for ten years, so they are well past the “getting to know you” phase. But both of them really drag their heels and refuse to be really honest about their feelings for each other. Fortunately, it’s a 250 page book, so they couldn’t hold out forever.

And just an aside: Would it be too much to ask for Silhouette to allow Brockmann to use the f-word? These are military men, and they are saving the world – not attending a cotillion. We know they probably aren’t saying “Oh shoot” and “jeepers.” Instead of actually reading that Wes or Bobby has said “No f*ckin’ way,” we hear over and over that Wes has used his favorite expletive, or Bobby has said “No way,” but inserted Wes’s favorite expletive in the middle. By the time we think about what Wes’s favorite expletive is, we have spent more time thinking about the word f*ck than we would if it were actually there on the page. (And yes, I am aware of the irony that I myself am not spelling out the word in its entirety).

Longtime Brockmann fans have no doubt picked this one up already. If you haven’t tried Brockmann’s books before, I encourage you to do so. I held out on reading these books for some time because I have little interest in the military. But once I read one I couldn’t get enough of Brockmann’s writing style or her SEAL heroes. While Taylor’s Temptation is not my favorite of the bunch (that would probably be either Get Lucky, Forever Blue, or It Came Upon a Midnight Clear – and don’t make me choose!) it is still a great read that I really enjoyed. This series is still going strong, and I can’t wait for the next installment.