llamareads
Written on May 11, 2019
Talia was in the last book – she’s the heroine’s roommate and BFF and the hero’s sister. At the start of this book, she’s just sublet the apartment of a ballerina friend who’s had to leave suddenly due to a family emergency. Only, it turns out it’s not a family emergency but rather that she’s on the run due to a drug lord… and the cop who was working with her decides to check on her late at night in her apartment. After the inevitable meet-disaster, Reed insists that she can’t stay in the apartment, and of course the only option is that she comes stay with him. And this is where everything gets weird and suddenly we’re in the middle of a romantic suspense novel.
While I don’t read a ton of romantic suspense, I do have certain expectations for it, and the whole plot required a lot of suspension of disbelief. I can’t believe Reed, who’s basically married to his job and deadset on making lieutenant, would compromise his ethics so much by getting involved with someone who may be tied to his big investigation. I really can’t believe that Talia would just randomly go home with a cop who basically broke into her apartment (he had a key, but still…) and then proceed to live there for weeks. I really didn’t like this component of the book, and since it’s a rather large part of it, this really affected my enjoyment of it.
“You pretend to be this big, old asshole. But I know the truth about you.”
“I’m a big, young asshole?”
The grin got even wider. “You’re nice.”
She pronounced the word with relish. He couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him or being serious. Or both.”
I did like the relationship between Talia and Reed, though it felt more like insta-lust to begin with. Reed’s a pretty grumpy hero and Talia’s pretty positive, so there’s a nice bit of opposites-attract going on. Grumpy characters meeting their match are a favorite trope of mine, and there’s a lot of teasing from Talia about how Reed is really a softie at heart. While they seem initially quite different, they’re both focused on their careers (Reed making lieutenant and Talia on landing the starring role in an important production), and also have both been burned by previous relationships, which does cause some seesawing back and forth. Once they gave in to the attraction between them, things get very steamy – Reed puts his handcuffs to good use – but neither can let go of their past relationship issues. I enjoyed their banter, but it did feel like it was very predictable – like, since Talia had been burned before by putting a relationship over her career, the same thing would happen again with Reed.
Overall, while I liked Reed and Talia’s relationship, I found pretty much everything around the whole drug dealer plot ridiculous. I’m not sure which of Talia’s friend group is up next in the series, but I will still probably pick up the next book in the hope it’s more similar to the first.
I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.