I’m such a bad reader! This is the first book I’ve read since January – shocking! I guess my New Year’s resolution to read a book a week didn’t work very well. One of my online reading groups picked this book for a book chat, so that forced me to finish something, finally.
Something About You by Julie James
(2010, Contemporary) 4/10/10
Grade: 3.5
When assistant U.S. attorney Cameron Lynde spends a weekend at a hotel, she never thought she’d witness a murder – or come face to face with FBI Agent Jack Pallas again. Three years ago, she’d worked with Jack and felt a strong attraction, but the investigation had ended badly. Now she’s forced to work with him again – and this time, the sparks will really fly…
This book started with a lot of promise. Julie James is excellent at writing snappy dialogue and building sexual tension between characters. I enjoyed the interplay between Cameron and Jack. There were also great secondary characters, particularly Cameron’s friend Collin and Jack’s partner Wilkins. But after a while, I wanted more, and it just wasn’t there. The book started to feel like yet another cookie cutter romantic suspense book. This was a real disappointment to me, because James’s earlier books felt so fresh and innovative. I’m not a big fan of romantic suspense, and I just didn’t care about the action scenes and the “killer on the loose” plotline. I was more interested in learning about the characters, and while there was some depth (particularly when it came to the heroine’s relationship to her friends), there just wasn’t enough character development. The sex scenes were hot, but they felt like dozens of other hot scenes I’d read before. (It’s a bad sign when the hero and heroine are having hot sex and all you can think is, “will they get done soon so we can go back to the gay friend?”) The characters just didn’t engage me enough to make the familiar story feel new.
This probably sounds like I hated the book, which I didn’t. It was well written and had some great dialogue. If this was by another author, I probably wouldn’t have been so disappointed – but if it had been by another author, I probably wouldn’t have bought it in the first place. Romantic suspense – even witty, hot romantic suspense – is just not my cup of tea. But it is a huge disappointment to find that my favorite author of 2009 has turned into yet another “eh, it was OK, I guess” author. And I see her next book is yet another FBI-agent-chasing-killers book. Sigh… still on the lookout for a good contemporary author who doesn’t write about FBI agents.
Karen Wheless
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