Carsen Taite

Usually, Taite writes terrific romance novels based in Dallas and featuring at least one lawyer – it’s what you expect her to write. However, in this book, she stepped away from lawyers, and instead her main characters are an investigative journalist, Macy Maron, and a disgraced cop, Beck Ramsey. While her legions of fans may not be happy with the change of venue, Taite has, nevertheless, written a tension-filled novel about a journalist’s determination to find the serial-killer of her best friend ten years before this book opens. The disgraced cop turned on her partner when he murdered an unarmed driver in front of her. Her brothers/sisters in blue have turned their backs to her, and she is relegated to the cold case desk working for a curmudgeonly sergeant who has no interested in investigating any of the many cold cases under her care.

I hadn’t read any of the blurbs about this book because if Taite has written a book I will read it. She had me hooked from the start of this book to its end. She was able to establish a fair amount of tension from page one and kept ratcheting it up as the cop joins her in her search for the killer. When the two women become romantically involved, each needs to trust the other to get what she wants and needs. The journalist doesn’t share the name of the person, she thinks is the killer with her cop but does share it with a precinct captain, the cop is suspended from duty for sharing classified information. The cop then uses herself as bait for the killer but is very surprised when both the killer and the journalist show up at very nearly the same moment – one to kill the cop, the other to save her.

If you like suspense/thrillers with a bit of romance thrown into the mix, this is the book for you. However, if you’re looking for one of Taite’s usual legal stories, this is not the book you want to read nor is it a book you want to pick up if you’re looking for one of Taite’s signature romance novels. There is romance here, but it is not the focus of the book.

My thanks to Bold Strokes Books for an eARC.… (mais)

This is much lighter than Carsen Taite’s usual stories. As a former law student (in another life), one of the reasons I enjoy her books so much is all the legal stuff. Yet she’s also really good at romance, and romance is all this book is about. Sure there are lawyers and a case, but they’re mostly background for the relationship between Campbell and Wynne.

After five years of working for big law firms hoping to make partners and having no life outside of work, best friends Campbell, Grace and Abby decide to leave their jobs and create their own law firm. On the same night, due to a carpet incident, Campbell literally falls into the arms of a beautiful woman, Wynne, whom she vaguely remembers from law school. When a client makes them work on a case together, Campbell finds out that the mousy student she’s known has turned not only into a beautiful and sexy woman but also a very smart one.

It’s a romance so of course they fall in love, despite the fact that each is supposed to be fighting to get the client to choose her firm in the end. Yet from the start they don’t really manage to see the other as the enemy. It’s obvious they try, but what’s meant to be will be (it wouldn’t be a romance otherwise).

It reminded me a bit of Melissa Brayden’s [b:Kiss the Girl|18406404|Kiss the Girl (Soho Loft, #1)|Melissa Brayden|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1384260344s/18406404.jpg|26041514], what with the best friends founding their own company together, each bringing her own strengths, and one of them falling for the competition. But the writing is very different, and so are the characters, so it didn’t feel like I’d already read that particular story.

This is the first book in a new series, and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.… (mais)