Dear Author » lawyer

REVIEW: About That Night by Julie James

Jayne — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:34 +0000

Dear Ms. James,

There’s no easy way to say this so I guess I’ll just come right out and get it over with. The bloom is off the rose. The last second basket rattled off the rim. I don’t love this book the way I’ve loved some of your other books. That hurt me to say it but … well the review will tell.

Relaxing with her friends in a bar after finals are over for their first year in law school, Rylann Pierce is laughing and having a good time. So she doesn’t shoot down the guy who tries to chat her up when she goes to the bar for the next round of drinks. He’s so cute that he just has to be one of those “he knows he’s so cute” kind of guys. But when her friend Rae quickly arranges the exit strategy so that Rylann is stuck alone and Kyle Rhodes steps up to escort her home, she discovers he’s much more than a gorgeous guy and son of a billionaire. But fate intervenes and they miss the planned date the next night thus going their separate ways.

Flash ahead nine years and Rylann is moving back to Chicago following the breakup of a relationship. She’s the newest AUSA in the district which means she opens cans of whoop-ass in Federal cases while working closely with, among others, the FBI, ATF, and Secret Service. Yeah, she’s a Bad Ass Prosecutor. And as an easy opening case that’ll let her get her feet wet, her boss Cameron hands her the plea agreement already worked out with Kyle Rhodes – aka the Twitter Terrorist. No, Rylann never expected to be handed a file folder with “United States v. Kyle Rhodes” on it. Not exactly a meet-again-cute.

Kyle Rhodes arrives in court expecting to see the asshole AUSA who’d railroaded him and called him a cyber terrorist. Yeah, what he did was stupid but when a guy is publicly dumped by his girlfriend in under 144 characters on twitter and then she posts a video of herself frolicking with a movie star, a man might feel the need to resort to some whisky which in turns fuels a dumb hack attack on twitter that shut it down for 48 hours. He eventually sobered up and headed back to face the music and would still be facing another 14 months of it behind bars except for the deal struck for his sister’s help in cracking another FBI case. Imagine his surprise when it’s Rylann Pierce who finalizes his release.

Well, Kyle gets his life back but is ready to act prickly when Rylann contacts him for help about something that went on when he was behind bars for 4 months. Still, he steps up, doing the right thing and finding himself strangely attracted to Rylann as she gets all lawyerly during the Grand Jury hearing. He also decides he wants to discover exactly what she looks like under all her sexy, power suits. So….they date. She does lawyer stuff. And he gets a new business venture started. And they have hot sex. And a few disagreements. And….work things out. The end. Wow.

There is plenty of your trade mark bantering here and I loved it. There’s great best friend dialogue between Rae and Rylann. Rylann exchanges quips with her fellow AUSAs and the tough men in suits she works with as they work to bring down bad guys. Kyle and his sister’s love interest, Nick, do the manly guy sports trash talking. Rylann and Kyle have great interactions even before they get to a bed. This stuff is wonderful. Also, the sex between Kyle and Rylann is smoking.

You do a great job explaining what goes into Rylann’s job. How hard she works, the things she’s up against in her quest as one “who prosecutes on behalf of justice.” I actually liked this part a lot which is saying something because most of the time we see her outside of court and handling paperwork is usually not exactly riveting. Though it is cool to see her go all lawyer on people. Jane does that sometimes at DA when people think they’re going to intimidate us when we post things they don’t like and I always squee and say, “Go, Jane!” Ahem… I have to admit that the parts showing Kyle setting up what he’s going to do are…not so interesting. Actually kind of draggy and skimable. Then there was the weird flashback to what happened to break up their date nine years ago and in the ensuing months after. And that dragged too. And parts got skimmed.

They finally have the talk and work things out but….as I sat reading the book, the unease I had finally crystallized. There’s really very little conflict here between Rylann and Kyle. Perhaps to lawyers, the fact that an Assistant US Attorney is dating an ex-con whom her office prosecuted is a big deal but to a non-lawyer like me, not so much. Maybe it seems like it’s coming close to a line but they never cross over it, nothing is illegal and for me the Klaxon bells and WARNING, WARNING alarms never truly sounded. Even a last minute misunderstanding seemed more made up than anything to worry about.

So, it’s a book with fun and funny dialogue, with two Beautiful People who have great sex as they fall in love and overcome a few tiny speed bumps along their road to happiness. But not much conflict or reason to get my panties in a wad as I wonder how they’re going to finally reach their HEA. C+

~Jayne

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REVIEW: Unraveled by Courtney Milan

Jane — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:00:05 +0000

Dear Ms. Milan:

Thank you for sending me “Unraveled” for review. I have enjoyed (but been somewhat critical) of your past works but your novella, “Unlocked,” was one of my best reads of 2011. Smite’s book was hotly anticipated. Part of the problem I had with “Unraveled” was the result of my own expectations and anticipation. I had created my own vision of Smite prior to “Unraveled” through my glimpses of him in “Unclaimed” and “Unveiled.” Smite, to me, was a closed off man who held rigid beliefs and allowed only his younger brother any kind of intimacy, either physical or emotional.

Smite in “Unraveled” met those expectations up until he began to interact with the heroine, Miranda, in chapter 2. From there I felt like I was taking a number of unsupported emotional leaps to get Miranda and Smite together, to get them both past their dark moments, and then into their HEA. I don’t know whether I would have bought into these emotional movements more if I hadn’t had preconceived notions about Smite.

Miranda is wig maker who lives in the Temple Parish, a slum protected by an unknown person named the Patron. If you do favors for the Patron, the Patron provides you with protection. This allows Miranda to live, work, and walk unmolested in this very bad part of town. Miranda is an educated young woman. Her father was the owner of a theater troupe, her mother an actress. Her family fell on hard times when Miranda’s mother died. Bereft of his soul mate, her father goes into decline and the theatre troupe falls apart and the source of the family income dissipates entirely. Miranda has made a meager life for herself and a young boy she adopted from the disbanded troupe. She tries to keep Robbie away from the more unsavory elements in the Temple Parish but as he advances in age (12) it becomes increasingly difficult.

As part of her deal with the Patron, Miranda uses her experience in the theatre to create different personas and she uses those personas to get disadvantaged youth out of trouble with the magistrates. Unfortunately, one of those magistrates is Smite and he recognizes her through her paint, her wigs, her clothes as someone who had appeared before him previously in a different incarnation. Smite takes his job seriously to treat the poor and the rich, the pretty and the misshapen, all with the same measure of justice unlike the other magistrates who either view justice as something to be sold or are too lazy to work at finding the truth. He knows that she is about to perjure herself and prevents her from doing it. He also seeks her out to impress upon her that she must stop or he will enforce justice upon her.

But there is something about Miranda that Smite finds compelling. So compelling that within a short time after meeting her, Smite offers to make her his mistress for a period of thirty days. Smite explains that he will set a time limit because he only allows himself a rationed amount of sentimentality.

Despite the fact that she is a virgin and despite that she slapped Robbie across the face just a few pages back for accusing her of selling herself to Smite, Miranda is delighted by Smite’s offer and moves into his newly purchased house forthwith.

I’m baffled. Why didn’t she sell herself before? Why was she so angry at the suggestion of selling herself but then readily accepts Smite’s offer? At one point, Miranda is described as “happier when your relationships can be framed in terms of commerce. You never accept help from anyone.” If that is true, I didn’t understand why Miranda didn’t choose the courtesan/mistress option previously. Was it simply not an option for her?

And what is it about Miranda, this person who does not have the same strict interpretation of the law, that attracts Smite to the point that he acts out of character? Later I understand that Miranda moves Smite in ways he didn’t expect because she doesn’t try to fix him; because she doesn’t see him as flawed or broken or something to be changed.

“My brother. Mark.” He twined his hand with hers. “There is no former mistress, Miranda Darling. There have been affairs, mind, but they never lasted long. Usually, she decides I’m stoic and cold only because I have been unlucky in love. She thinks she’ll be the one to melt through my defenses. She thinks that she can fix everything that is wrong with me by simply weeping over me. It lasts until she realizes I won’t spend the night, she can’t touch my face, and I despise women who weep for no reason. I have no tolerance for maudlin affection, and less for women who want to fix me.”

“Fix you?” Miranda said. “Why would anyone need to fix you? You’re not broken.”

“That’s precisely what I’ve always said.” He slid down to lie next to her. “Oddly, few people ever believe me.”

“I know what broken is,” Miranda said. “My father was broken, after my mother died. He just stopped working. He wouldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t even get out of bed. He just lay there and cried.”

“Good heavens. How long did it last?”

“Three years.”

“Three…three years.” He shifted to face her. “Three years.”

“I told you I know what broken is. That is broken—staring at the wall and weeping, while creditors hammer on the door and your troupe slowly slips away, stealing the best costumes in lieu of wages. When your friends leave you and you still cannot move, and nothing your daughter says can break you out of the spell. No man is broken because bad things happen to him. He’s broken because he doesn’t keep going after those things happen. When you told me about your mother, and how it made you resolve to be the person you are… What I thought was, ‘Yes, please, I’ll take him.’ Because you didn’t break.”

There was a pause. He propped himself up on one elbow and then picked up the watch he’d left on the bedside table.

“Would you know,” he said, his tone a bit more businesslike, “this conversation has officially exceeded my daily quota for mawkish sentimentality. That’s it, then.”

“Quota?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“My sentimentality quota. There’s a limit as to how much sentiment I will tolerate in a day. I’ve just reached it.”

“It’s not—” she glanced at the watch in his hands “—not yet three in the morning. And this is…a special occasion.”

“Nevertheless, we’re done. As much as my pride loves to be puffed up, I’d appreciate it if you could refrain from further compliments. And definitely no protestations of love—that would put me off for a good long while.”

There were portions of the book I loved, including the dialogue exchanges between Smite and Miranda. Yet, I didn’t understand why Smite was suddenly telling Miranda all his secrets. Or maybe his past, his night terrors, his fears, weren’t secrets. They seemed secrets in previous books but maybe they were just secrets in previous books to build suspense for this book? The speed at which Miranda and Smite fell in love; the speed at which Smite unbent; the speed at which Miranda fell into Smite’s bed, all happened too fast for me. I felt like I understood where you wanted to go in your book such as awaken a character to how the rigidity of one position could be harmful but I never felt convinced once I got there. The movements from emotional transition to emotional transition were missing.

I also was taken aback by the numerosity of love scenes. For a great portion of the middle part of the book I felt like it was one love scene after another and while it was well done, I wasn’t sure why the movement of the book took place in bed for large swaths.

I did like the contrast between the justice handed out by the Patron and that by Smite, that justice done in secret and in the dark was unstable and uncertain and didn’t actually achieve the goals it sought. Justice shouldn’t make someone like Miranda afraid. That part of the book was well conceived from beginning to end. The prose is lovely in the book. I loved the dialogue. I thought that the questioning of the concept of justice and who administers it was well done. It was the romance that felt rushed. C+

Best regards,

Jane

A Selection of December Harlequin Presents

Jane — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:00:29 +0000

I haven’t had much luck with Harlequin Presents subscriptions of late. In December, I enjoyed three of my eight books. The problem is that I’m never sure what books I’m going to enjoy and thus the subscription seems worth it. I guess I’ll reevaluate mid year 2012.

The Trophy Wife by Janette Kenny is the next to last addition in the Notorious Wolfe series (or Bad Blood series as it was originally labeled by Mills & Boon). It featured a model with an eating disorder and computer billionaire. While I appreciated that the story attempted to tackle the issue of anorexia and societal concepts of beauty which prizes thinness over everything, I felt that the story was overloaded with sex and dealt very little with the conflict between the characters. I wasn’t even convinced that they knew each other by the end of the book. They had been married for nearly two years but spent so little time together, wrapped up in their own jobs, that they hadn’t even seen their partner’s homes which may have been okay if the first time that they actually went to the other’s homes wasn’t by the 70% mark of the book. C-

The Power and The Glory by Kimberly Lang. I bailed on this one after the second chapter. The hero is the campaign manager for his father, a Senator, who sounds like a dickwad and the heroine is a protestor for some environmental lobbying group. I am so sick of politics and politicians that I could not stomach reading more than about 20 pages of this book. Maybe in another era I would find this more palatable but, alas, could not. DNF

The Man Every Woman Wants by Miranda Lee. The heroine is a lawyer who does contract work for a sports agent. She confesses that she has been weaving a tale about their faux engagement to her dying grandmother and now her dyying grandmother wants to meet him. The hero agrees to do this favor for her and has a bit of fun with it. The heroine’s family is sports mad and the heroine showing up with a former star athlete and current sports agent increases her cachet. B-

A Christmas Night to Remember by Helen Brooks. My main complaint about this story is that it takes place over two days and the couple has serious issues. The heroine is involved in a terrible car wreck. She’s maimed and scarred and has never felt secure in her husband’s love. He’s so beautiful and so rich and there are always dozens of women casting lures for him, all of which he has steadfastly ignored. The heroine was beautiful prior to the car wreck and she prided herself in being able to fit in with the fast and fashionable but now that her legs are less than perfect, she doesn’t know what will become of her and she’s sure that her husband will leave her. In order to prevent him from leaving her, she’ll leave him. He refuses to leave and in the space of two days (right before Christmas) convinces her anew of his steadfast devotion. I should love this story. It is the kind of Brooks’ story I usually enjoy but I wasn’t convinced that the heroine’s deepseated emotional fear could be assauged in just a couple of days. C

On the First Night of Christmas by Heidi Rice. Cassie gets splashed by a car careening around the corner while she is looking at holiday windows at Selfridges in London. Rather than be a doormat, she marches over to the vehicle, stopped at a signal and bangs on the window. She tells him off and when he fails to provide an appropriate response to her, she jumps in the car only to realize that the driver is a former high school classmate of hers, one she’s always had a crush on. Just off a broken engagement, Cassie’s confidence is at an all time low and when Jace Ryan comes on to her, it’s like a balm to her wounded ego. They embark on an affair, destined to only last until the New Year when Jace returns to New York. In that time period, Cassie falls hard for Jace but Jace is confused by his feelings. He doesn’t really believe in love and just wants to enjoy the moments as they come. I really enjoyed the ending because I felt like it didn’t force the issue. It does have a traditional HEA (provided by the epilogue). B

On the First Night of Christmas actually had a similar conflict to Once Touched, Never Forgotten by Natasha Tate, a book that I didn’t like much. Once Touched, Never Forgotten is a secret baby story. The heroine decides that the hero won’t be a good father and more importantly, doesn’t want to be a father so when she finds out she is pregnant she leaves him. Five years later he rediscovers her and her secret baby. She had a terrible childhood and was abandoned by her own father. She projects her fears onto the hero that he too will abandon their child. Of course, she never gives him the opportunity to choose. The hero isn’t sure he knows how to love but he promises that he will be a good father. The heroine is relentless in her accusations that he will be a terrible father based on nothing more than her own fears. She was a bitch but then he later uses sexual blackmail to get her to marry him so I figure that they belonged together. And unlike the Rice book, the hero in this one belabored his inability to love over and over again. I got it. She was abandoned. He had crappy relatives. The melodrama was over the top. D