A solid near-future police procedural, with a fully realized setting that falls firmly on the side of feminism and social justice. It isn’t the most inspired mystery — I figured out whodunnit 56% of the way in — but the world building and the cop talk more than made up for it.
The thing that drove me nuts about this book, tho, isn’t even the romance between the heroine, Lt Eve Dallas, and her billionaire boyfriend, Roarke. They’re two damaged people (or assholes, if you’re feeling blunter) who don’t know how to deal with being in love so behave acutely terribly to one another. In that, it’s realistic, but it really irritates me that people find this awful behavior aspirational. Example of unacceptable behavior: when Eve is reluctant to move in to Roarke’s mansion, he moves all her stuff over without telling her. As a friend said, Eve should call herself on him, because that’s not okay.
The first few sex scenes were also pretty intense in a good way, but it just got kinda gross as the book progressed, to the point where I was wincing because some of the stuff described just sounded painful (and I’m a middle-aged married mother of three who definitely sowed her wild oats.) Anyway, I’m not turned off enough by Roarke to stop reading the series, because the rest of the book was pretty neat; I just hope that this relationship improves with time.
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire