Published synopsis:
Navy SEAL Zack Pritchard is home on leave determined to avoid his brother’s girlfriend, Chloe La Ruse, the object of some pretty erotic fantasies. If he can just avoid her, then walk his sister down the aisle everything will be great or so he thinks.Unbeknownst to him, his brother, Gordy’s life is in the toilet. He’s dropped out of college, is broke and frustrated. All he wants to do is drive for NASCAR, but in the meantime he’s picked up a gig that promises quick money and is only a little illegal.
Chloe La Ruse’s life revolves around graduate school. Every so often she raises her nose out of a book to notice that her boyfriend hasn’t been around in months, his family hates her, her thesis is incomplete and men only ask her out for one reason. She teaches sex education. She’s counting the days until she can leave.
Many love triangles involving thwarted ambitions, fraternal competition, drugs and racecars work out well. Unfortunately this one has some problems.
Review:
Zack likes being a Navy SEAL. Strange as it seems, his life is uncomplicated. He gets to go to exciting locales and take dangerous risks that get his adrenalin pumping, as well as help keep the country safe. This may leave him as a bad candidate for boyfriend or husband, because SEALS always leave, but that’s okay. He’s not looking. The only downside – the Navy keeps threatening to promote him. Which would take him out of the field and behind a desk, spending his days doing paperwork and training recruits.Chloe hates her life in Riggers, Texas. Other than Gordy, her almost non-existent boyfriend, sometime boyfriend anyway, she is alone. His family hates her, she’s too busy with graduate school to make friends, and dating has been hell. Men see her body and hear that her major is human sexuality, and they think they have a green light to take her to bed. Who cares if she has a brain and genuinely wants to help people. Basically, her life sucks.
When Zack and Chloe are brought together because Zack’s sister is getting married, both are taken by surprise at their reaction to each other. Zack, because there’s no way he can have a long term relationship while a SEAL, and Chloe, because she’s sure he’s just like his brother and all the other guys she’s dated. Love ‘em and leave ‘em. Without the love part. And, as if their attraction to each other isn’t bad enough, they’re thrown even closer together when a mysterious death affects both of their lives.
People can only hide their feelings for so long, but can people change their whole lives for love? In Nancy Brophy’s The Wrong Brother, the reader is brought on a roller coaster ride to test out this theory. Along the way, there’s humor, family dynamics that don’t sugarcoat how things are instead of should be, and bad guys that want to ruin everything.
About half way through, this romance turns into a murder mystery; and that half is just as good as the first. Nancy Brophy has the ability to turn a whirlwind romance into a refreshing, can’t put it down, do they really have to find the murderer because then the book will end kind of romance. Both Zack and Chloe are realistic characters who are portrayed as smart, independent people who happen to stumble into love. The secondary characters are realistic and interesting, if not always nice. The family issues are far from the typical nuclear family, but they are dealt with as many families deal with them – sometimes with denial, sometimes with frustration, and sometimes, with love. I’m ready to read Nancy Brophy’s next book to see what other characters she has to draw me in like this romance did. I thank the author for a review copy and I give the book five stars.
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