Review: Author has great potential - plot (Sometimes less is more...)
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2014
Plot in 3 sentences:  9 days before she gets married, Jada McLean catches her fiance having sex with her BFF and the rest of the book, she finds out he wasn't anything that she thought he was. The 'superhero' in the book, Jonathan Kole, is the DA for San Francisco and helps her through some major drama (both physical and mental). They have instant chemistry, both bad and good, and romance ensues for this couple amidst death, kidnapping, threats, jealous exs, car chases, illnesses, fires, shootings, beatings, break-ins, car crashes, etc.When I first started this book, I was excited. Jada takes an immediate dislike to Jonathan. It's great. She is sassy, completely confident, brings his ego down in seconds. It's interesting and even sexy.Then the author loses me a bit after that. Jada becomes very insecure, frightened and needy. Yes, she is experiencing some major drama, but I expected her to go into high gear and fight her way through everything. Jonathan keeps telling himself (the book is written in dual POV) that he has never met anyone that was so strong and so sure of herself. But Jada doesn't exhibit those characteristics very much during the vast majority of the book. She survives, but she kicking a**.Jonathan is every woman's dream. Or at least mine. Super sexy, tall, incredibly smart, successful, ambitious, wealthy from an amazing family, loyal, a caretaker, honest, and just overall yummy.But a few times, he blows up, loses his cool very uncharacteristically. He at one time accuses Jada of lying over something incredibly minor. Yes, he was a bit emotional over the item she was looking at, but even then, he is a DA - they never should lose their cool like that. It seemed a bit unstable.Jada is a strong, independent, smart, super gorgeous, ambitious, loyal, a caretaker, honest, etc. She is a great character. But she has just be bamboozled by a guy that she thought she knew for the past 2 years. So now she is in perpetual mode of confusion and has one foot out the door when it comes to Jonathan. They get close, then she gets 'deer in the headlights' scared and bolts or attempts to bolt. Jonathan has a visceral reaction to her fear/mistrust and gets emotional himself. They are both a bit unstable. Made me feel a bit icky about their relationship. Wanted them both to stay strong and didn't like to see them both so emotionally weak.The pace of the story is a bit frenetic. There is A LOT of stuff going on. Lying, intrigue, death, action (it was like a Sly Stallone movie at times), etc. I think if the author focused on the intrigue portion of the book and threw in just a little bit of action, it would be less frenetic. I can see how she was creating a lot of drama and wanted our hearts to race, but it got a bit too much for me. How much insanity can one couple take? It was like trying to pack 6 weeks of clothing in a tiny suitcase. It felt like things were bulging out the sides and I just wanted to dump all the clothes out and repack.I love love love lots of dialogue. And this book has a lot of it. It's great. The only issue I had was that it was a stream of dialogue. There was not a lot of description. So you would have quip after quip and there was no pause to describe hand movements, physical movement, location in room, etc by each speaker. So without the break, the dialogue seemed like the characters were firing comments back and forth with each other. It got a bit exhausting. Just a descriptor here and there would have made the conversation flow a bit better.The other characters were interesting and likeable as well. The family members on both Jada and Jonathan's sides were loveable and supportive. Would make interesting second books if the author decides to go that route.I think this author has a lot of potential, just a bit of tweaking on this book and streamlining would been great. The storyline at the ending got super far fetched and a bit over the top - had to just plow through and finish the book.She certainly knows how to write sex scenes.Will give this author another try on her next book. Hopefully the kinks will have been worked out by then.