Finding Jodelle by Susan Stoker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sometimes the safest place to be is together.
Finding Jodelle
Older and set in his ways, Baker Rawlins never thought a relationship was in the cards, let alone love. Especially when years in the military and continued work for the government keep him on the radar of nefarious people all over the world. For that reason, he resists as long as possible when it comes to Jodelle—the beautiful, kind, slightly broken woman he can’t get out of his mind. It takes each of his friends falling in love for Baker to realize protecting Jodelle doesn’t mean pushing her away—it means keeping her close. In his life, in his arms, in his bed…
Jodelle Spencer has endured one of the worst tragedies a person can experience, and now spends large chunks of her days keeping local teens safe as they surf off Hawaii’s sometimes treacherous coast. It’s there that she first met Baker, the mysterious and sexy former Navy SEAL who doesn’t seem interested in more than a polite acquaintance—until he does. When the man wants something, he goes for it, and he’s suddenly decided he wants Jodelle. But what they’re building together requires trust…trust that, after years of heartache, she’s not sure she can give…
Trust that’s further put to the test when one of the kids she protects finds himself in danger, which spills over onto Jodelle…and the only man she can rely on is the one she’s afraid to love.
Baker Finally Gets His Story, and He Was Worth the Wait
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💚🖤
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😋😉😎😮😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration
Characters and Plot Summary
I went into this one excited because Baker Rawlins has been lurking around the edges of this series for six books, always the quiet, watchful one while everyone else got their happy ending. Turns out the wait was worth it. Baker is 52, a former Navy SEAL who still does information gathering work for the government, and he has spent years convincing himself that a relationship just isn’t in the cards for a man with his kind of past and his kind of enemies. Jodelle Spencer is 48, a graphic designer who has been through more than her share of grief, including a cheating ex-husband and the death of her son, and she pours her energy into mentoring the teenage surfers who ride the sometimes dangerous waves off the Hawaiian coast. That’s actually how she and Baker cross paths in the first place, since he’s often around the water and she’s the one keeping an eye on the kids.
What got me was that Baker doesn’t chase her right away. He’s polite, a little distant, and it takes watching every one of his SEAL brothers fall for someone before he finally admits he wants Jodelle too. Once he decides, though, he goes all in, and that shift in him is a big part of the fun. The suspense thread kicks in when one of the teen surfers she looks after, a boy named Ben, gets pulled into real danger, and that danger doesn’t stay contained to him. It spills over onto Jodelle, and suddenly Baker is the only person she can lean on, which is a problem for a woman who has already decided trusting men is a losing bet.
Highlights and Limitations
The highlight for me was Baker himself. There’s a scene where he’s giving Jodelle one of his blunt little speeches about protection meaning staying close instead of pushing her away, and I actually paused the audio for a second because it landed harder than I expected from a guy who spends most of the book being gruff. Stoker gave him wisdom and steadiness underneath the tough exterior, and that combination is what makes the romance work.
I do have a complaint, though, and I’ll be honest about it. The opening stretch bugged me. Baker goes from barely speaking to Jodelle to suddenly making decisions for her and acting like their relationship is a done deal, and for a minute I found myself thinking she should have pushed back harder instead of going along with it so easily. I wanted a beat where Jodelle called him out more directly for jumping ahead of her, and it never quite came. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but it’s the one place where I wished the pacing between his intensity and her healing had matched up a little better.
The Ben storyline was a nice surprise too. Watching Baker and Jodelle essentially co-parent a scared teenager in the middle of a suspense plot added a warmth I wasn’t expecting from a military romance, and it gave their relationship a test that had nothing to do with bullets or bad guys.
Narration
Emma Wilder and Aiden Snow split the narration, and it works exactly the way you want dual narration to work in this genre. Snow gives Baker a low, controlled voice that only cracks open in the tender moments, which makes those moments hit harder because you’ve heard him hold back for so long. Wilder brings a softness to Jodelle that never tips into fragile, and you can hear the exhaustion of a woman who has grieved a child even in scenes where she’s just talking about her day. When the suspense ramps up around Ben, both narrators tighten their pace just enough that I found myself listening a little faster too, which is exactly what you want from a good audio performance.
Final Thoughts
This was a satisfying send off for the SEAL Team Hawaii series. Baker earned his book, Jodelle’s grief felt real instead of used as a prop, and the Ben subplot gave the story heart on top of the romance. My one wish is that Jodelle had pushed back on Baker’s early bulldozing a little harder before falling into step with him, but once the story found its footing I was fully invested in these two. If you have followed this series from the start, this is a strong way to close it out, and if you are new to it, Stoker keeps it standalone enough that you will not feel lost.
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