A military romance with twists and turns, a space program, and a sci-fi layer ... what will happen when the scientist becomes attracted to the astronaut? Will his agenda be compromised? Will they find love?

A unique twist on a SEAL romance if you like your stories with a space element.

This story was a little different in that two Navy Seals are sent into a program that is getting ready for a new space vehicle that needs to go into space to care of space junk and put a satellite into orbit. Also they need to find out who is working at sabotaging the program, and has killed two other Navy Seals, and several other men have been killed over the last few years. Captain Bennet Sheraton has skills to do some of the work and the other Seal Milo has computer tech which helps with other parts. Together the two swim buddies are working at discovering the causes for all of the problems. The real story is the relationship between Dr. Kimberly Warren the brilliant engineer, and founder of the secret space program who is feeling like it is being taken away from her by other men. Really Bennet sees her and because of that they are able to work together to find the people who are behind the sabotage and also find love in each other. What more is that this story is the author giving tribute to the Frogmen men from the 60’s and 70’s that retrieved the astronauts from the capsules when they returned to earth and landed into the ocean. I remember those scenes watching them and since reading about the history of UDT’S, Frogmen, and now Seals. A very good book.

Dr Kimberly Warren is in charge of a secret space program. When scientists start dying, they bring in Captain Bennett Sheraton to go undercover and find out what’s happening.
This wasn’t a bad book. The characters were well written, but I had a problem with all of the science placed in the book. I’m not crazy about that kind of stuff in books, which is why I don’t read Sci Fi. If you don’t mind that aspect, then I would recommend.

The Soul of a SEAL is a book of many parts. We begin with murders of SEALs assigned to a secret space program, designed to clear the area around Earth of space debris, ranging from nuts and bolts to larger pieces of rubble.
Captain Bennett Sheraton is an experienced and expert Navy SEAL. He is sent to the secret space program ostensibly to become an astronaut pilot but in reality he’s supposed to be a detective and find out who is killing SEALs and why.
Dr. Kimberly Warren is a brilliant engineer who has designed the space craft to be used on the space flight. When she and Bennett meet subtle sparks begin to fly between them. Even though they try to deny their attraction, it grows, but will there be an HEA?
So, there is a love interest, a scientific mission, and a SEAL trying to qualify as an astronaut pilot. In addition there are assassinations, sabotage, and political disruption of Kimberly’s space program. Following all of that, even if the space ship gets into space can it accomplish its mission and return to earth safely? On all levels, The Soul of a SEAL is a real nail biter!
While the book starts out at a relatively slow pace in order to build the backstory, once it picked up speed I could not put it down. I recommend this for anyone who enjoys a good love story wrapped up in intrigue and excitement.

The Soul of a SEAL is the fourth novel in Anne Elizabeth's West Coast Navy SEALs series, but it's the second title in the series that I've read, and also the second novel I've read by this author. I give it 2.5 stars.

The novel opens with the introduction of Navy SEAL Captain Bennett Sheraton, nicknamed "Boss", a 40-year-old SEAL, based in Coronado in California, who, along with 3 members of his SEAL team is on an op in an undisclosed location, to take down two members of a terrorist cell. No sooner does he return home when he is assigned a new mission, this one involving a top secret space program at the Lester Facility, where two failures and two Navy SEAL deaths, have made it necessary to send someone with Bennett's unique skill set to find out what's going wrong and to move the project forward. He'll be training in the hope of being selected to pilot a new, experimental space shuttle, essential to the deployment of a laser array, one designed to get rid of the space junk orbiting the planet, junk which could interfere with other satellites. It's second purpose is to spot, lock on and destroy asteroids endangering the planet while being protected from anyone turning the array to use it as a weapon against the Earth. This assignment is one Bennett has dreamed of since he was a young boy dreaming of becoming an astronaut. He'll be accompanied by fellow SEAL, Jonah Melo, an engineer, and his on-site point person will be Dr. Kimberly Warren, who designed and created the shuttle and who is overseeing the project as the person in charge of the mission details. A brilliant and beautiful wunderkind who managed all this before reaching the age of thirty. Kimberly, who would have loved to pilot the shuttle herself, was grounded by a heart defect that could result in her blacking out, having a heart attack or dying. Far-fetched? I thought so.

When Bennett and Kimberly meet, the attraction between the two is practically instantaneous, but the narrative of Bennett's pilot training and his and Melo's investigation into the SEAL deaths becomes weighed down by far too many technical details and what appears to be sabotage as aspects of the shuttle malfunction for no apparent reason. Much of what follows falls into the realm of science fiction, a genre I read, as well as espionage, and a budding romantic relationship between Bennett and Kimberly.

I was intrigued by the combination of genres, but my expectations of this being a great, exciting read fell flat for several reasons, the first being that the set-up takes too long, in fact, the first 10% of the novel. Once Bennett is finally at the facility and involved in the many facets of astronaut training, all forward motion of the plot and character development ceases and the next half of the book contains little more than the technical aspects of his training and problem solving as things that work one day, don't work the next. There are other potential pilots for the shuttle, from a number of other nations who might be sabotaging the mission, but their involvement in the sabotage isn't fully explored.

By the time anything of major importance occurs, you're halfway through the novel, and while the novel is well written and the author gives the reader more of a story, more character development, and a bit more romance, as well as getting the shuttle off the ground, I found myself somewhat bored with the overly detailed writing. I also couldn't wrap my head around the fact that this shuttle mission had only one person on board, something that seemed highly unlikely, especially since whoever piloted the shuttle was going to have to leave it unmanned while going outside to assemble the array and get the shuttle safely back to earth. The only thing I did find exciting was the dangerous aspects of Bennett's mission in space, as well as the discovery of who was behind the sabotage.

By the time Bennett returns to Earth, the reader is met with more tedium about his need to spend quite some time in a decompression chamber, and his deepening romantic relationship with Kimberly, which takes up the last quarter of the novel. Yes, there is some less than thrilling explicit sex, and a HEA ending, but again, the ending of the novel and the two characters declaring their love for one another was so long, so slow, so corny, and so drawn out and repetitive that I couldn't wait for this novel to be over.

While it was clear that the author did her homework in extensively researching this novel, I'd rather she'd have spent more time on the story and character development and less time on the seemingly endless minutia of the engineering aspects of space flight--something her editor should have noticed and dealt with. I'll give her points for the attempt at combining science fiction, espionage, mystery and romance, but this was not the exciting, fast-paced and thrilling novel I was hoping it would be.