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LesRom, Reading and reviews, Science Fiction, Thrillers

Review: The Edge of Yesterday (C.J. Birch)

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As a rule, I try to avoid science fiction that involves time travel. Time travel gets very messy, and most authors don’t think enough about the implications on a character’s own timeline when moving those characters back and forth through time. Case in point: a recent movie on one of the streaming services that sent soldiers back in time to gather a group of people to come fight in the future (of those soldiers) against something. I didn’t watch it because my immediate thought was: why not just bring technology backwards or give it to the people in that time, a la Star Trek IV’s transparent aluminum?

In any case, I’m glad I took a chance on this book, because it is fantastic.

Hundreds of years into the future, people 0n Earth are living far underground to avoid detection by drones. Most live a hand to mouth existence, there is no sun, no plants, and no fun. It seems nanobot technology ran amok (Terminator-style) and humans went into hiding.

Using AI as a helper, they’ve figured out how to use time travel, and they send people back to the past with specific tasks to perform to try to avoid having this particular occur, based on percentages determined by the AI. I could see a problem with this.

Easton Gray is selected to be a level five in her department: the level fives are the people who slip into the past, perform their task, and then hit the recall option on the computer implanted in their forearm. Her sister Calla is the only family she has left: her mother died when she was 12, and her father died at some undetermined date along the way. Calla has been promoted to the survey crew – a very dangerous job in itself – but Easton doesn’t want her to take it because of the danger. They argue a bit about it, and Easton tries to deal with Calla’s boss to move her to something else, only to find someone higher on the food chain has already done this. As it turns out -and as to be expected -it isn’t just actions in the past that have consequences.

Easton makes the jump. Her task: find and kill Zach Nolan, who is deemed responsible for the nanobots raging out of control. She finds herself in a field, naked, near a farmhouse. When the residents leave, she pops in, steals some clothes, and she’s on her way. Eventually, she finds and presumably breaks into the veterinary office of Dr Tess Nolan.

It turns out Tess has come to live in this rural town after leaving Vancouver and a rather crazy woman she was dating. The local vet was retiring, so she bought the practice. Tess happens to come into the office, and patches up Easton, who refuses to go to the hospital.

They meet again around town. Easton continues gathering information, as the people coming from the future are dropped in near when their target(s) can be acquired, never an exact date. Tess and Easton get to know one another, and they’re quite taken with one another. But Easton knows that not Zach alone needs to die: his discoveries go to Tess when he dies, and she is then responsible for the dystopian nightmare in the future. Easton arranges it, then sits back.

Only to find herself dropped into the field again. Something has gone wrong, and when that happens, they’re just dropped right back into the same place to try again.

Easton goes through a few of these iterations, increasingly having issues with not wanting to kill Tess, even though she knows one death could save billions.

But then a mystery visitor shows up, and the entire mission is turned on its head. I won’t go further than that except to say: the explanation makes complete sense, and confirmed one of my suspicions. The action picks up as hunters arrive to chase them, and the outcome is…well, you’ll have to read it.

It’s a great read, even if you’re not particularly into science fiction. If you do like science fiction, like me, I think you’ll find both the technological and philosophical issues around time travel adequately explained, and better, to make sense.

Five out of five stars. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Bold Stroke Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Reading and reviews

Review: A Convenient Arrangement (Aurora Rey, Jaime Clevenger)

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Jess, a columnist for Sapphisticate (great name!), an online mag for lesbians, writes about lifestyle stuff when her boss says she should write about cuffing. I may very well be in the minority that I know what this is and that it has nothing to do with BDSM or role-playing in the bedroom, but then again, my head is full of all sorts of things like this that make people not want to play Trivial Pursuit with me.

Cuffing just means hopping into a short term, winter relationship, with or without sex, to get through the season, with the two parties going their separate ways by spring. A way to pass those months and all the festivities that go with them with a temporary partner since a ton of things for the season are usually for couples.

Case in point (kinda) is Cody, super butch mom of one, and a professor seeking tenure. She’s told by a couple of people that it probably would be a good idea to get an in with the female president of the university, who is married to a woman. Can’t hurt, right? Cody reads the article Jess writes, and leaves her a voice mail (awkward and cute) about being her cuffing partner for the season.

It doesn’t hurt that they meet at a fall fare where Jess is dressed up as a giant pineapple and is great with all the kids who come by to take a shot at knocking stuff down.

They agree to be each other’s plus one, lay out some ground rules (no pressure for sex, but if it comes up later, they can talk about it), and we’re in business. Cody has a date to go to school functions with someone, and Jess gets content for her column. It is, to coin a phrase, a convenient arrangement.

Of course, they’re both hot, and there’s some smoldering going on. They continue on, Cody making inroads with her ultimate boss because Jess and the president’s wife get along like a house on fire. Jess adores Cody’s son Ben, and he her. There are some Moments when it looks like they will hook up only to be interrupted by Ben, or something else. Readers who are not fans of kids or interruptus will be unlikely to be happy.

Cody and Ben wind up going with Jess to her family Thanksgiving, an everyone has a blast. Jess’ family love both of them, and they are quite taken by the mob of people.

But then, oh no! People in their 30s who can’t communicate! Cody gets a call from Anastasia, her ex-wife who has shown zero interest in Cody, and the other mom wants Ben to come out at stay for two weeks. Jess agrees to go – they look forward to being in a hotel room without a kid – but Jess gets a special request to interview a politician in DC and then an interview with an outfit in Philly, where she submitted a resume. Jess doesn’t tell Cody about the Philly connection, which by this point is a no-no: I couldn’t figure out what was to be gained by Jess not telling Cody, since by now they’re in love with one another.

We all know that there is a HEA at the end, because that’s the genre and not a spoiler.

No major complaints about any of it, and Ben really steals the show. Again, if you’re not okay with a kid being one of the most important things in someone’s life, this is no the book for you. There are no drawn out, steamy sexytimes here – most are fade to black. It’s an easy read and everyone is normal.

Three and a half stars out of five, rounded up to four.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Reading and reviews

Review: Meet Me in Madrid (Verity Lowell)

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Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene…

Except it isn’t two households, ccit’s two women, and it isn’t fair Verona, it’s Madrid. And no one dies at the end, which is refreshing (looking at you, Boys on the Side and Fried Green Tomatoes).

There’s bound to be spoilery stuff here.

Charlotte, once a Yale undergrad and now (some kind of lowly curator title) and courier shepherding pieces of art to the places they’ve been loaned, is stranded in Madrid during a sudden storm. Adrianna, once a Yale lecturer, and now a lecturer on the entirely opposite coast, is in Madrid on a sabbatical, running down and transcribing the diaries of a nun. They knew one another briefly,back at Yale, but now they’ve both been focused on their life in academia, pursuing their careers. They meet up at a cafe Adrianna knows, and the writing at that point tells you what going to happen: instalove.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, ass it’s a trope of the genre. I did like the wrinkle that there is at least the fact they knew one another in some way prior to Madrid. This means they’re also a bit older than the characters who usually inhabit the gene, and they’re also both black, another departure from the genre. No young white women with blond hair, blue eyes, zero body fat and perfect abs here: the author paints both women as “buxom”, which I took to mean that both have at least something approximating a bit of middle age spread in addition to both having big chests.

After a three day marathon of sex, Charlotte heads back to New Haven, and both women have the newly-met-but-too-far-away stars in their eyes, looking forward to their next meeting, in NYC, for the new year.

There’s a brief appearance by Hadley, a slim, white, young woman with perfect everything (oops, I guess not all tropes are dead) at the beginning of the new year version of Madrid, someone Charlotte can’t stand for reasons not well explained, who invites them to a NYE party at her parents’ house, and they go, for some reason. After finishing the book, I understand why, but it was a little heavy handed.

More sex, over the next couple of days. Adrianna flies back to Madrid, and we get an encore of Emotions.

Charlotte is tasked with taking some art out to California, and Adrianna insists that she meet Esther, a dear friend of hers. Esther’s having a time with her husband, who has been having an affair with one of his students. To put the betrayal on blast, he sends the student to tell Esther about it. After getting stuck in LA by yet another freak storm, Charlotte winds up at Esther’s teaching her son Fisher to make beignets. There’s a weird, uncomfortably written conversation between Esther and Charlotte, and the “is this older woman, having been married to a shitty dude with whom she had a son, really a lesbian, or at least bi?” thing was off-putting. There’s also a connection made, thanks to networking, when Esther takes Charlotte to Piedmont, who may or may not be in the market for a half courier/half lecturer type of person.

Next up: Chicago (Adrianna’s hometown) at Valentines Day! Also, interviews, where she once again faces the dean from Piedmont, but they have to pretend they don’t know one another. Charlotte also gives a talk on race and art, and her asshole boss from the museum – “I don’t see you as a person of color, Charlotte” – is there, once again saying stupid things, this time about how Brer Rabbit and Songs of the South are not racist, I guess, and how art shouldn’t be politicized. It’s the sort of blather some overly educated jerk says when they’re trying to put down one of their own employees with a nonsensical what if. What I thought immediately, and what Adrianna actually says in the book against his crap, is that his statement itself is political.

More sexytimes. They depart from one another, again.

In between all this – and sometimes when they’re recovering from a round of sex, there’s discussion of how difficult it is in general to have a career in the arts, and in particular, how hard it is for black, gay women to have a career in the arts. This is true (not just of the arts, of course, BIPOC LGBTQAI+ folk have a hard time of it anywhere) but the way it’s written feels like it’s been copied out of a policy paper.

Later in the book, we get the Sophie’s Choice: both women get job offers, but it would mean they would swap coasts, and still have the same problem: long distance relationships, even with these two who can get horny on command via facetime, are problematic in a lot of ways. They finally have their first blowup, after Adrianna tells Charlotte abut her offer from Yale. They get snippy from one another, and then give each other the silent treatment: no texts, no calls, no facetime.

Esther tells Adrianna she’s being a jerk and to knock it off. We get the usual makeup bit, but of course, they are still apart.

Charlotte,her pal James, and three other people get the axe fro the museum thanks to Jerkface McRacistBoss. James, crafty queen that he is, has receipts: Jerkface gets fired, the five are rehired, and Charlotte is given a vague promise or promotion to Deputy Curator when the woman in charge retires.

But where we land is in Cali. Esther has hooked up with Hadley, so we have a May-September romance with the two mains, and a May-December with the secondaries. It also occurred to me that out of the four white adult guys we meet for any real time, one is gay, one is a dean of the arts college, one is a two-timing douchebag, and the last is a racist homophobe.

If you’re reading for the sex, you’ll be delighted: there’s a lot of it, and it’s very graphic, sometimes to the point of being clinical. If you’re reading for the story: it’s ok. The writing style seems to be most comfortable when the topic is academia, and the descriptions of interviews and campus visits was the best writing and the best look at getting hired in academia that I’ve read outside of nonfiction.

Three out of five stars (possibly a fiver if erotica is your thing).

Thanks to Harlequin/Carina Press/Carina Adores and NetGalley for the reading copy.

At the end of the day, it’s a HEA – how could it not be?

Fiction - historical, LesRom, Reading and reviews

Review: The Perks of Loving a Wallflower – The Wild Wynchesters #2 (Erica Ridley)

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This book two in a series – something not on the cover. As is becoming a regular occurrence for me, I have not read the first. Based on the ending of this one, there’s likely a third brewing somewhere. This does serve as a standalone, however, and there aren’t many issues with knowing what came before except a few passages that are explained/thought about by the characters.

Philippa York, the daughter of a well off but untitled family, is an intellectual and rapidly reaching her sell by date. Her mother is furious that she failed to marry a duke – this occurred in the last book, and there is enough context given here to understand at least that it didn’t go through. What’s a mother in Regency England to do? Work on finding her someone else to marry, who has a title and money, of course. For her part, Philippa despairs of finding a man who stirs anything within her.

Tommy (Thomasina) Wynchester is a master of disguises and has been pining for Philippa for at least a year. They apparently met during the previous book, but Tommy didn’t have the guts to talk to her. These days, Tommy disguises herself as Aunt Wynchester, a regular attendee at Philippa’s salons. Tommy is much braver when dressing up as someone else, and decides to dress up as Lord Vanderbean. While riding in the park, she speaks to Philippa and her mother, charming Philippa and at least not causing her mother to go ballistic.

Successful in the enterprise, Tommy continues to act as Tommy, and enters into a bargain with Philippa: Tommy will help Philippa find a suitable, titled man to marry by pretending that Tommy is wooing Philippa – after all, many people want most what it seems they can’t have.

This works about as well as one might think, and eventually the charade breaks down, with Philippa rightfully accusing Tommy of deceiving her and Tommy not able to offer up much of a defense other than she wanted to be close to Philippa because she loved her.

There’s a subplot that exists only to scuttle Philippa’s engagement to a man with a title her mother approves of, involving the breaking of a cipher, done by one of the members of Philippa’s salon and the credit for which is claimed by her cousin, the man to whom Philippa is now engaged. The entire Wynchester family gets involved to help gather the evidence to prove it is not his prize to claim. I’d have liked more on this, but it’s a romance primarily, not a mystery.

Readers of Regencies in particular and romances in general will probably like this quite a bit. Ridley is a well-known historical romance author and knows how to weave a tale. My only real quibble is that the Wynchester clan doesn’t seem to have a dud among the bunch, and Tommy herself doesn’t seem to have many, if any, flaws beyond a crippling sort of stage fright as it relates to speaking to Philippa as herself and not Lord Vanderbean. Other than that, she’s confident in everything that doe does.

For those who worry about such things, there are several sex scenes in the book; they are not terribly explicit, but if you like your sex scenes to be off the page, you may want to skip those pages.

Overall, a solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Forever/Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Mysteries, Reading and reviews

Review: Her Consigliere (Carsen Taite)

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FBI agent Royal Scott has just come out from another assignment, and has been promised both some time off and end to long undercover assignments in the future. Alas,this is not to be, as her boss wants her to go undercover and infiltrate the Mancuso crime family, which he assures her won’t last too long. She reluctantly accepts.,

When Royal leaves the FBI building, she saves a woman from being run over by an SUV. Intentional? Hard to tell. It turns out the woman, Siobhan Collins, is the consigliere (lawyer/advisor) to the head of the Mancuso family. Lucky break that Royal gets to start on the newest assignment right away.

Royal scores an assignment and introduction to a couple of low level associates working for Mancuso, and winds up at the Don’s house, unloading untaxed liquor, which seems to be their specialty. Royal and Siobhan run into one another again and share a few bantering lines.

Siobhan, speaking to the Don and his natural daughter (Siobhan was basically adopted by Mancuso, and raised in the family, much like Don Vito allowed Tom Hagen into the Corleone family in The Godfather). She’s a lawyer. She’s careful, as she should be, protecting the Mancusos. This is why I found it mind-boggling that she tapped Royal – someone she doesn’t know and hasn’t yet vetted – to come work for them as more than a driver of boosted liquor. Even the Don thinks it’s a good idea, just because She pulled Siobhan out of the way of the SUV. Why? Everything she is supposed to do is supposed to protect the family. This is one of the off notes in the story for me. I get it, The two of them need to be put in a situation where they will spend more time with one another, but this was ahead scratcher. At least Siobhan’s driver/bodyguard is suspicious of Royal.

Siobhan has a suspicion that the Don’s waspish, nasty daughter is up to some kind of no good, but decides she can’t act unless there’s hard evidence of it. Royal has her own family entanglement to deal with when her brother shows up at her door.

The romance part was okay. The mystery/mob part of it, even with the issue I noted above, was better, with Siobhan looking for anyone who might want to hurt the family, and Royal looking out for anyone who wants to kill Siobhan. They get more time together and in fact do wind up sleeping with one another (not: there are a couple of minorly explicit scenes.

The ending feels a little rushed, and not without a bit of a cliffhanger about what happens to someone other than the main characters. The end made me do a bit of a head scratch – it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility, but seemed a little too…public, I suppose if the word I’m looking for.

Overall, something that can be read in one sitting without a ton of plot holes, or at least none that couldn’t be ignored for the sake of the two mains. Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Reading and reviews, Romance

Review: Her Countess to Cherish (Jane Walsh)

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I learned, after reading this, that there’s a book before this one that introduces us to at least Beatrice. Or, shall I say, Lady Beatrice Sinclair now, after dragging her family out of poverty by marrying Lord Sinclair and having him pay off her father’s debts. He’s cold and sneering toward her, since she threw herself at him and she and her family apparently ran off the woman he was supposed to marry. Bea isn’t really excited about Sinclair, and the day after their wedding and her first night providing wifely duties, she flees to the country to stay with a friend for awhile.

Said friend is living with a friend of her own – who just happens to be the woman Bea shoved aside in order to marry Sinclair. While she and Bea are a little frosty to start, it turns out Bea did her a favor, because now she gets to live with the woman she loves instead of the man she doesn’t.

We then meet Georgina Smith, who is also staying, and Bea takes an immediate dislike to her. To me, it seemed that Bea was projecting, because I found Bea to bea not a terribly nice person: she was snobbish, selfish, sour, and unthinking. What Georgina saw in her was a mystery to me, but I know, instalove.

Speaking of instalove, Bea was charmed by George Smith, Georgina’s cousin and someone she met at her wedding. Such Bea’s luck that George is also staying at this house in the country, too! She hopes to run into him there (spoiler: she does, mainly in the library).

I think what amazed me most about this book is just how many LGBTQI+ people are in this tiny town. It seemed like you couldn’t swing a dead cat around without hitting someone that fit somewhere in that group.

One thing I can give this book is that the principals don’t immediately fall into bed with one another. It’s more of a slow burn of a romance, although I still wasn’t a fan of Bea along the way.

Bea finds out she’s pregnant, and decides she will divorce Sinclair and marry George instead, without bothering to talk to George about it, which leads to some rockiness. Eventually, she disposes of that idea, and admits to Sinclair she is pregnant but shock of all shocks, he’s suddenly turned into an ultra caring, forgiving, and entirely other person in the three months she’s been gone. They come up with a solution, and everyone’s story wraps up like a nice little gift.

It’s always nice to see books with gay+ main characters, but this really struck me as something written as a message book, with long discussions that would be more suitable to 2021 than 1800 England. I’m not opposed to message books per se; my problem comes when virtually every piece of the book is a message the reader is hit over the head with time and again. The ending was rather forced and tidy, but at least there were no loose ends.

I’m going with three stars out of five.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Reading and reviews

Review: In The Spotlight (Lesley Davis)

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Talk about instalove!

Actor Cole has left the successful tv series she’s been starring in to take a part in a new movie that’s being made. She’s being paired with up and coming actor Eris. The latter is new, but she’s delighted to be in the movie with Cole.

I know it’s a trope of the genre – after all, the two main characters need to get together, and quickly, or at least be intrigued by one another – but the two in this book have broken all land speed records, by talking about settling down, grandkids, and how they’re soulmates before we’re too long into the story.

We watch the two go through the typical things people go through, and also get to meet the side characters: Aiden, who has written the screenplay for the movie, her fiancee Cassidy, also an actor, and Mischa, the best friend and rather a third wheel to everything. I must admit I found them a bit more interesting than the two mains – not that the mains are not interesting, but sometimes reading a lot of lesroms in a row (four ARCs in a row for me to review, this time around) sometimes renders the two mains and their happiness subordinate to the other things going on.

What else would be going on? A crazed stalker, who has been shipping Cole on the tv series she was in, and who is convinced that she an change Cole’s mind to get her back on the show. We already know the identity of the stalker, so there isn’t a lot of “whodunnit” in this. The only question is how far she’ll take it.

Overall, a decent enough book to keep one occupied for a few hours. I found out after reading it that this is apparently the second book in a series. As is my fashion, I have not read the first, and I have no idea if it would inform this had I, but it can stand alone.

Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Stroke Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

LesRom, Mysteries, Reading and reviews

Review: When in Doubt (V. K. Powell)

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Jeri Wylder has a problem: she’s told she shot an unarmed man during a raid on a drug house, but can’t remember any of it. She’s riding a desk and headed for therapy while the investigation of those circumstances continues.

Simone Sullivan also has a problem, as it happens. As the part owner of a building a developer wants to buy in order to knock it down and replace it with a new development. She also happens to be a therapist.

The two meet when Wylder shows up to a report of an arsonist at Simone’s building – against policy, and against her desk-riding current assignment. Since this is at least partially a romance, it includes the tried and true instalove between them.

Strictly speaking, I am not against this – it’s a trope for a reason, and it saves time. But in this case, I just did not get it, and through the book continued to not get it.

Jeri, on the outs with her girlfriend (and in an “open relationship” she claims), drinks too much and clearly suffers from PTSD. She treats people terribly. I really didn’t like her as a character, although I understand PTSD can significantly change how people behave – to the point of Jeri almost crossing a line when Simone was telling her no, something that I don’t think I would have excused. Simone, as a character, was fine except for what I thought was terrible judgment getting involved with Jeri. Simone’s “friends”, however, are nasty pieces of work.

The mystery part of the book was fine. The search and unmasking of the villain was expected, and it was rather straightforward.

There’s nothing explicit in this novel, which was fine, too – sometimes the characters are in bed having graphic sex so often you’d think they wouldn’t have time for anything else. It’s more mystery than romance, and the romance itself is carried out the way most are.

I’m giving this a four out of five stars for the mystery. The romance gets a two, because I didn’t like it. At all. I’ll split the difference and put it at three of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Stroke Books and NetGalley for the review copy.

LesRom, Mysteries, Reading and reviews

Review: From the Woods (Charlotte Greene)

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It all starts innocently enough: a group of friends decide to go hiking/camping in an area of a national forest that is only open to a small number of people each year. Then it all goes spectacularly wrong.

Before that happens, though, Fiona has to be prodded into joining her friend Jill and her married friends Sarah and Carol. Fiona and Jill have the usual sort of non-assertive/almost bully relationship that is fairly common in fiction.

But talk her into it they do, and the four head out to meet their guides and Roz, the leader of the guide company. Of course Fiona is drawn to her immediately, and Roz to her, even with the rather brash Jill acting like a twelve year old.

At first, it’s a pleasant ride on the horses, but they hear what sounds like someone chopping down a tree – which means someone else is on the trail who should not be there. When Roz and two guides scout up ahead on the trail, they come back a bit skittish. When asked what’s wrong, they don’t say and the group keeps going until they reach the first camping area.

Fiona and Roz are in that scoping out phase of one another, and it’s one part sweet and one part trope. There’s lots of staring, the “accidental” brush of hands, etc. Meet cute in the middle of a forest.

It turns out that Roz and the guides had found runes carved into trees, and when Fiona and one of the others go to the latrines, they find more. The group now has a decision to make: do they continue, or turn back? Continue it is, even with the awareness that someone is in the forest an carving weirdo runes into trees, setting bear traps, and digging pits. This is the part in movies where someone realizes there’s a killer on the loose, and instead of barricading themselves in their house with a shotgun, they’ve left a sliding door open and hear noises in the basement, so they go down into the basement, without turning on any lights, to see what it is while you scream, “Are you out of your mind?

That should give you an idea of what happens next. People vanish from the camp site. Someone falls into a bear put. Another gets a big chomp from a bear trap.

There’s a mystery to solve, and solve it they do, although I had a hard time believing the ending, it was still an okay book. Everyone finds that well of strength within themselves, pushing themselves into doing things that in their other, “real” world they could never see themselves doing, and I think that’s a very good thing that people as a rule should be doing in their part of the world, even if it seems to them o be inconsequential: those small steps add up.

If you’re looking for sexytimes scenes, there are none in this book – something I kind of enjoyed after reading two other books with what seemed like one per chapter. Nothing against the sexytimes, but if you’re not writing erotica, where those scenes are the point of the story, throwing in too many scenes of that type in genre fiction really is a detriment to the story.

I’m giving this a four out of five, as the book is written well enough, the bad guys sufficiently creepy, and someone finds their strength that they didn’t even realize they had.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the review copy.

LesRom, Reading and reviews, Romance

Review: Bulletproof (Maggie Cummings)

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This is the second book by Maggie Cummings I’ve read (Brooklyn Summer is the other). this popped up as recommended for me since I read boatloads of mystery/crime/police procedural/thriller novel. This is a romance with police procedural elements. If that is not your thing, this is not the book for you.

If you’re looking for romance and sexytimes, the story of Dylan Prescott, NYPD detective, and Briana long, US District Attorney will be a good read. The two meet (sort of) on the basketball court, as Briana watches two teams play from the stands with her friend and roommate Stef. They meet for real at a bar, later. There is, of course, the instant attraction. The fire starts to burn, they exchange some innuendo, and they part for the night after telling one another they were not looking for anything serious,.

Neither of them told the other what they do for a living, but they find out the next day at the office, where Dylan’s team is tracking a drug operation, and Brianna is the USDA assigned to the case.

This flirting in the office and at the bars continues, and we get scenes from Dylan’s side and Brianna’s side until finally the two get together in bed. If you are not a fan of explicit sex scenes, this is not the book for you, unless you want to skim past those pages – if you do, you’ll be skimming a number of pages here. If you don’t know what packing is…well, you’ll figure it out.

There isn’t a ton of character development going on here, but to be fair, that isn’t really why people read these sorts of books, and most lesrom revolves around jealousy anyhow – which is exactly what happens here, when Brianna leaves the Fed for a job with a well known defense attorney with whom Dylan has some history.

The book does have police work in it – probably enough to justify classifying it as a police procedural and having readers of the genre (like me) pick it up. That portion of the book is fine, and is actually one of the handful off books in the genre that show the more tedious side of police work. It isn’t all car chases and busting down doors. Still, that part of the book is thin, story-wise, and the two main characters could have been in any profession, and the story wouldn’t be harmed by it.

Overall, a solid three out of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Stroke Books and Netgalley for the review copy.