GOODREADS SUMMARY
Gallery Books | Paperback, 259 pp.
Series: The Legal Briefs, book #1
Publication Date: April 28th, 2015
Adult Fiction | Romance
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
As a DC defense attorney, Stanton Shaw keeps his head cool, his questions sharp, and his arguments irrefutable. They don’t call him the Jury Charmer for nothing – with his southern drawl, disarming smile and captivating green eyes – he’s a hard man to say no to. Men want to be him and women want to be thoroughly cross examined by him.
Stanton’s a man with a plan. And for a while, life was going according to that plan.
Until the day he receives an invitation to the wedding of his high school sweetheart and mother of his beloved ten-year old daughter. Jenny is getting married — to someone who isn’t him.
That’s definitely not part of the plan.
***Sofia Santos is a city raised, no-nonsense litigator who plans to become the most revered criminal defense attorney in the country. She doesn’t have time for relationships or distractions.
But when Stanton, her “friend with mind-blowing benefits” begs for help, she finds herself out of her element, out of her depth, and obviously out of her mind. Because she agrees to go with him – to The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Mississippi – to do all she can to help Stanton win back the woman he loves.
Her head tells her she’s crazy…and her heart says something else entirely.
***What happens when you mix a one stop-light town, two professional arguers, a homecoming queen, four big brothers, some Jimmy Dean sausage and a gun-toting Nana?
The Bourbon flows, passions rise and even the best laid plans get overruled by the desires of the heart.
It is really unfortunate that I had such an awful time reading this. I like legal drama/comedy. Sadly, the law aspect in the plot was marginal to say the least. But that’s not why I didn’t enjoy this one at all.
Friends with benefits, Sofia and Stanton has quite a good set up. In the courtroom, they are virtually unstoppable. They are fiery, and fully committed to winning their cases. In the bedroom, their drive to one-up each other retain the intensity that fuel their partnership. When Stanton receives a wedding invitation from his childhood sweetheart (and mother of his daughter), he concocts a plan to stop the wedding. His bright idea was to bring Sofia along in the hopes his ex will see exactly what she’s missing out on.
My major beef with this book is rooted in the fact that Stanton and Sofia are not the type of characters I could empathize with. Simply put, Stanton is a jerk and Sofia is a doormat. He wanted his cake and eat it, too. He doesn’t want his ex to marry, but he doesn’t want Sofia left to her defences to fight off the advances of other males within a 5-foot radius. I didn’t like him at all. He was a spoiled, entitled man who considers himself a gift. All I really want to do was punch his junk. That’s how adverse my reaction was to this man.
Don’t think I’m forgetting about Sofia. My God, woman. The days of catering to a man’s whim over yours ended about several decades ago. Did you not get that memo? Where were you when the feminist revolution was on the rise? Gah. I’ve never been thus inclined to shake a woman. Yes, this book brought some violent (and virulent) tendencies out of me; and yes, I realize that I shouldn’t be taking this seriously. But when you staunchly believe in something, you would not be able to stop yourself from reacting. Much like I can’t help but feel how stupid Sofia was through most of this book. The ending didn’t do anything to salve my annoyance, unfortunately. It was too little, too late at that point.
I was told the second book is way better than this one. I’m clinging to that hope. On a side note, can we talk about how tediously long that summary was?