About the Book
Corporate litigator Mia Shaw suffers the shock of her life when she finds her colleague and friend brutally murdered. Grief-stricken and furious, Mia vows that she will do anything to seek justice and make the killer pay.
The man accused of the murder is a friend of security tech guru Noah Ramirez, but the evidence just doesn’t add up. To save his former ATF partner, Noah needs to convince Mia that the real killer is still on the loose.
Mia soon has more than the criminal prosecution to worry about, however. She is tasked with taking over her friend’s last case and learns he was hiding secrets about his client. She thinks she may have stumbled upon corporate espionage that has turned deadly, but she has no idea of the danger involved. Her only ally is Noah, despite their difference of opinion on the homicide case. Can he win Mia over to his side and protect her from ever-growing threats?
Excerpt
“Chase!” She banged on the door again. “I know you’re in there. You’re probably working, but I told you that I’m taking you out to celebrate.” She tapped her black heel on the floor as she waited. “We have a reservation in Buckhead, and we’re going to be late.”
It was only the second week in January, so their billable hours had started over for the year, and Chase would be eager to get a jump on making his objectives just like the rest of the lawyers at the firm. He was even more of a workaholic than she was, and that was saying a lot, but she didn’t want him to ignore this big career milestone. Once he got out of the apartment, he’d be glad she made him go.
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. Strange. But she wasn’t deterred. She was bound and determined to drag Chase out to celebrate.
Mia walked through the door and yelled his name again. But she only got a few steps inside before she stopped short. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she took in the scene of disarray. Her grip on the balloons loosened, and they floated up to the ceiling.
She took a few steps farther into the living room, which looked like an F5 tornado had gone through it. Two lamps were smashed on the floor, the bookshelf was turned over, and the navy cushions were pulled off the couch and strewn on the floor.
What in the world had happened?
“Chase?”
She worked her way through the apartment room by room. When she entered his bedorom, she heard herself let out a piercing scream.
Blood. There was so much blood.
Her friend’s body lay on the bedroom floor. His blue eyes were open, but there was no light behind them.
She knew he was dead, but she had to check for a pulse. Her hands shook as she made contact. The life was gone from his body.
Slowly she backed out of the bedroom, shaking, unable to bear the grizzly scene any longer. Tears started to well up in her eyes, and anger quickly followed. She pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed 911, trying to keep her breath steady.
“This is 911. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“My friend was murdered.”
Review
As with the previous books in this series, this was a mixed read for me. On the one hand I love legal suspense, and it’s obvious this author is completely at home in the genre. There’s also no denying she knows how to get a story off to a cracker of a start. Nothing quite like finding one of your closest friends murdered in their own home!
On the other hand, telling rather than showing was the predominant writing style, sometimes to the point of redundancy, and for me, the characters never quite came to life. Too, I’m still not sold on the extra point-of-view characters beyond the hero and heroine. There weren’t as many in this book as in the previous one, but we still get Tyler Spencer, the defense attorney who agrees to defend Noah’s former ATF partner, and Owen Manley, the chief lawyer for the company Mia’s friend was representing before he was murdered. Owen’s point of view perhaps added a little to the tension in the story, but the scenes from Ty’s point of view often felt like they were padded out with unnecessary narrative, and they didn’t add anything essential to the story that couldn’t have been worked in through either Noah’s or Mia’s point of view.
As for the suspense plot, it maintained my interest and even provided a few surprises along the way. There’s something about the challenge of clearing an innocent person when the evidence is against them that fires me up! The romance I found less engaging, partly due to the aforementioned ‘telling’ style of writing, which meant that observations from other characters along the lines of “The tension between you and Mia was filling the air” were the only indications of said tension.
On the whole, I think I’m likely to pass on this author in the future, however readers who don’t mind the aspects of this author’s writing style that I’ve mentioned above will find this a solid romantic suspense read.
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not influenced the content of my review, which is my honest and unbiased opinion.
Previous Books in the Series
About the Author
Rachel Dylan was a litigator in one of the nation’s most elite law firms for over eight years and now works as an attorney at one of the Big Three automobile manufacturers. She is the author of four Love Inspired Suspense novels and lives in Michigan with her husband.
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