Status Updates From SEAL Camp (Tall, Dark and D...

Grumpy injured SEAL Lieutenant Jim “Spaceman” Slade is forced to take time off as his knees are going to need another surgery. He gets an offer to help his friend who is retired and runs a seal camp for corporate types. There he meets Ashley, her brother and his friend. Ashley is a successful lawyer but timid and afraid to stand up for herself so she hopes the camp will teach her some confrontation skills.

Okay. I've had it. The staff are treating the camp participants, whom they haven't tested at all for health and fitness levels, as if they're healthy 18-year-olds at a military boot camp. Why anyone would pay big bucks to be tortured like this, or why Ashley's supposed BFF would recommend she go to this camp, is beyond me. This is awful.

I'm also not feeling any sparks at all between these two. Jim may be attracted to Ashley, but she'd have to be even more of a pushover than she's been this whole book so far to be attracted to him, with his blame-the-victim attitude toward sexual harassment. Ashley would have been far better off taking a full-contact self-defense class or studying martial arts than participating in this awful camp.

The "solution" that Jim proposes to Ashley to stop Bull from sexually harassing her is to let Bull think Jim is having sex with Ashley. Though she confronts him for that patronizing idea, which is itself sexual harassment, she herself is not dealing with reality. If she sticks around this place, Bull is inevitably going to sexually assault her, and none of the staff, including Jim, is going to prevent it.

Jim confronts Ashley about Bull's sexual harassment and scolds her for not somehow defending herself, similar to how carelessly cruel parents and teachers demand that their small sons and daughter stand up to bullies twice their size on the playground. What Jim should be doing is taking responsibility for the fact that this misogynistic camp does not have zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

I'm not impressed with this SEAL camp so far. The hero Jim stands around letting the heroine Ashley get sexually harassed by a big bully named Bull who keeps blatantly acting as if, at the first opportunity, he will rape Ashley. Then Jim purposely puts the Bull on the same team with Ashley. Jim assured the camp owner that he would handle Bull, but he's doing nothing so far. Ugh