State attorney Bridget Nolan is successful in all aspects of her life—except romance. After breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, she’s been slow to reenter the dating scene. To be honest, she has more important things to do like putting bad guys behind bars. But with her brother’s wedding right around the corner, she suddenly needs a date and fast. Lucky for Bridget, the legal intern is almost done with his program.
Matt Kido is dumbstruck by Bridget—total love at first sight—but there’s one problem. She’s totally off-limits while she’s his boss. But the moment he no longer reports to her, Matt decides to take a chance. An impulsive decision takes them to Las Vegas where, as the saying goes, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Unless you put a ring on it.
Release Date: Apr 14, 2020
Heat Level: Sensual
Publisher: Penguin Group
Imprint: Berkley
Price: $9.99
The follow up to Christopher’s debut novel merges some fun tropes.
I am still trying to wrap my head how I felt about this book, it’s been over a week and I still can’t quite decide if I the pros of the story outweigh the cons. I will mention that the author does a great job of throwing some tropes on their head and manages to work in a boss/employee trope without it becoming a controversial issue with a main character abusing their position of power.
The characters themselves are fantastic, Christopher creates believable people who come from very different backgrounds and they fall for each other. Two worlds, the rich and the working class, molding together in a unique way with plenty of tropey goodness, from marriages of convenience paired with a fling to a thing. Both Matt and Bridget do a good job of playing off each other and overcoming the stereotypes and stigmas brought to them via their life growing up; doesn’t mean that some of the false beliefs that have wormed their way into their hearts and minds don’t rear their ugly heads which creates the a lot of the conflict. Turns out all this character development worked because I kept turning the page. I didn’t know what would happen or how the story would play out and I was interested in the outcomes for both main characters.
The internal conflict is more of a driver than external conflict. Both Matt and Bridget struggle with all-too-real demons that I’ve experienced in personal life. I did enjoy how the author weaves real life and if you like romances with a hefty dose of real world, you can’t get closer than this.
Where things went off the rail for me is that the writing style wasn’t really my favorite. There’s a lot of deep introspective and often backstory information was rehashed over and over; more telling versus showing. I found myself shouting that out in the first three chapters multiple times. Later, after I read the ‘Thank You’ from the author, I figured out why this book was a little more difficult for me to dive into. Let’s just leave at this is one of those books that required surgically crafting the story together. Some people enjoy books like that – with a kind of Harry Met Sally vibe with interactions and scenes being piecemealed.
Overall, the story is at its essence a good one, with plenty of internal conflict; the villains are very realistic in the fact that they don’t see themselves as bad guys. Matt and Bridget are cute in how they fall for each other, and navigating in opposite parts of society. The story left me wanting to know more about a particular priest and I wonder if there might be a taboo story coming in the future. If you like tropes switched on their head; this book is the one for you.
~ Landra
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