This review is the result of a bad choice in a moment of weakness.
This review contains many, many spoilers.
I didn't like this book. I
requested it back in the summer knowing it would be a light read. The plot on
the book's back cover sums up the whole book: Nicki Price, a young
investigator, comes to New Orleans to find her big case to solve. Luckily, her
cousin - Nathan/Nate, has a Private Investigations company and she decides
that's where she'll start because her cousin "owes" her after all his
teasing when they were kids. Really? As luck and cliché would have it, Nate and
Nicki's client is a rich, handsome, and god-looking man named Hunter Galen.
Nicki, despite telling herself and anyone interested in listening to her that
she's a professional and competent PI, spends more time fantasizing about her
client. For more than half of the book we see Hunter and Nicki act not very
stressed out that Hunter is accused of murdering James, his friend and business
partner, or that his business might end; they act like two love birds which is
plain annoying.
The professional PI, instead of looking for evidence and trying
to save her client, goes on to complain about her poor background and bringing
up, compares herself to the rich people she encounters while working hired
on the case, and is more interested in socializing, bonding, and falling in
love with Hunter, Hunter who seems to consider Nicki a diva in disguise, and
has no problem kissing her and falling in love, although he has a steady
relationship with another woman. Of course he breaks up with her and Nicki
takes her place in the blink of an eye, because with Nicki "what you see
is what you get" and who needs more reasons than that to fall in love?
Of
course, we are not surprised to learn that the ex-girlfriend/fiancée is an
evil, spoiled brat, who had an affair with James, and her daddy was the one to
kill James to save his sweet spoiled daughter of the shame James would have
brought upon her if he revealed her shocking secrets of the past. We only learn
all these in a rushed manner towards the end of the book, after we've seen
Nicki and Hunter play lovers. It was Nicki who gets all the praise, because she
"has a suspicion all along" who the murderer was (but for reasons we
don’t know, she doesn’t say a thing, and she even hides information from Hunter
because “she doesn’t want him to think she’s jealous or has anything against
Ashley”), although she has a hard time figuring out who attacked her, although on
the night of the attack she was told that "she should learn to leave other
woman's man alone". Such PI!
In the end, after Nicki becomes a
successful PI overnight, engaged to be married to the rich and fabulous Hunter,
we are given hints that she has a successful career ahead of her. I wonder if
she'll fantasize and fall in love with other clients....
The writing of this book is not
bad, but the clichés are too much. I was interested in who murdered James, and
it would have been nice if clues were given along the way, but no, we are left
with Nicki and Hunter. The ending was rushed, and not a big surprise. The
author made observations at some point that gave away the whole ending, for
example saying that Ashley surely didn't work alone and she couldn't have
murdered someone, it had to be someone with money, and so her dad's name comes
up. Maybe the reader shouldn't have known that, instead it would have been more
fun to guess who was guilty. The same goes for the scene with Nicki's attack:
it was intense, and I was curious who did it and why, but when the phrase
"to leave other woman's man alone" was said, it was clear; it just
became tiresome to see Hunter and Nicki try to guess who it might have been
when we the readers knew all along.
As mentioned, a light read. This
is the first book in the Secrets of the South series, but I don't think I'm
interested in the other ones. Unless I forget about this one and I fancy a
light read again.
2stars
I received an ebook version of this book via Net Galley. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment