Protecting Bree by Susan Stoker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It wasn’t easy to escape the first time. She might not be so lucky a second. 

Bree Haynes never imagined herself a stalker. But how else could she know if the man who’d saved her in Vegas was someone she could truly trust? Now, after following him and his friends for months—and inadvertently getting involved in their lives not once, but twice—Bree is exhausted…and ready to ask for Smiley’s help. Because the man hunting for her, Mateo Castillo, the sex trafficker who’d bought her from her ex in Vegas, wants his “property.” And it seems he’ll stop at nothing to get it.

Jude “Smiley” Stark never imagined himself the obsessive type. But there’s no denying he’s been infatuated with Bree from the moment they met in Vegas, and the feeling’s only grown with every month he’s failed to find her. When he discovers she’s been right under his nose for months, he vows not to let the woman out of his sight again until she’s safe, once and for all. Problem is, even after he deals with Castillo, Smiley knows he’ll never want her to leave. He wants what his friends have…and he found it the first time he laid eyes on Bree.

But her enemy isn’t so easily dispatched. In fact, Smiley, his teammates, Tex…they’ll all be shocked to learn just how resilient the man’s turned out to be. Because Castillo hasn’t just come for Bree…

He’s also come to retrieve property stolen from him years ago…by another SEAL team.

Protecting Bree

Watching From the Shadows, Waiting to Trust

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛💚❤️
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😋🙂😁😘🥰
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

Character Backgrounds and Plot Summary

This is the final book in the SEAL of Protection: Alliance series, and Susan Stoker saved a good one for last. Bree Haynes was sold to sex trafficker Mateo Castillo by her own boyfriend in Vegas, and Jude “Smiley” Stark was the one who got her out. What got me right away is that Bree didn’t run to safety and stay there. She ran from everyone, including the man who saved her, because trust wasn’t something she had left in her after what happened.

The twist is that she spent months secretly watching Smiley and his teammates from a distance, trying to decide if he was the kind of man she could actually rely on. By the time she finally approaches him for help, she’s exhausted from carrying that secret alone, and Castillo hasn’t given up looking for his “property.” Smiley, meanwhile, never stopped searching for her after that night in Vegas, and finding out she’d been nearby the whole time hit him hard. Once he has her back in his sights, he refuses to let her out of them again.

Highlights and Limitations

The slow burn here worked for me because it’s rooted in something real. Bree isn’t hesitant out of typical romance novel stubbornness, she’s hesitant because a man she trusted literally sold her. So every small step she takes toward Smiley, like finally admitting she’d been following him, felt earned instead of rushed.

I also appreciated that Smiley isn’t written as endlessly patient and saintly about it. He’s got his own obsessive edge, admitting he’s been infatuated with her since Vegas, and that gives him some texture instead of making him a flat protector archetype.

Where the book stumbled a little for me was Castillo’s subplot involving property he claims was stolen from him by another SEAL team years earlier. It ties the whole series together thematically, but I wanted more time spent on Bree’s internal recovery and less on the external villain mechanics toward the back half. It’s a minor gripe in an otherwise satisfying wrap up to the series.

Narration

The audiobook is a full cast dual narration production with Emma Wilder, Aaron Shedlock, and Chris Kipiniak, and the split really pays off in a story like this one. Wilder gives Bree a guarded, watchful quality in her early scenes that shifts noticeably once she starts letting Smiley in, and I could hear that emotional thaw happen gradually rather than all at once.

Shedlock’s take on Smiley has this steady, almost gruff warmth that suits a guy who’s spent months quietly obsessing over a woman he couldn’t find. Having a separate narrator handle Castillo’s perspective added a layer of menace that a single narrator switching voices probably couldn’t have pulled off as convincingly. The pacing of the narration matched the tension well, especially during the moments when Bree realizes just how close Castillo has actually gotten.

Final Opinion

As someone who’s worked through most of this series, I thought this was a strong send off for the Alliance crew. Bree’s arc from someone who couldn’t trust a single person to someone choosing to hand her safety over to Smiley felt like the emotional through-line the whole series had been building toward, even in the earlier books that weren’t hers.

I’ll admit I got a little choked up when Smiley realizes exactly how long she’d been close by and how much fear that must have taken to maintain. If you’ve read the earlier Alliance books, this is a must listen for the closure alone. If you’re new to the series, it stands alone fine, but you’ll get more out of the found family dynamic if you’ve met these characters before. Recommended for anyone who likes their military romance with real trauma at the center instead of just window dressing.

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