ARC Review | Evidence of Desire by Lexi Blake

Evidence of Desire by Lexi Blake
Series: Courting Justice
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense
Publication Date: January 8th, 2019
ARC from the publisher

| Book Review |

Evidence of Desire is the second book in Lexi Blake’s Courting Justice series, and sadly, it fell apart here for me. I really enjoyed the series starter, Order of Protection, which was my first experience with this author; d I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since. I’m going to make this review short so I can move on with my reading life. For one thing, things that may have sparked my interest in the previous installment grated on my nerves here – name dropping characters I’ve never met became so cumbersome that I started hating them without knowing them. They felt gratuitous and out of place. For another, Isla and David had zero chemistry. Nada. There was no build up at all. It was like all of a sudden they decided they were in love, but where was the lead up? I never felt any connection between them, and the love scenes made me cringe. They were not sexy at all, and if anything, it further solidified that this ‘couple’ had no zing. David’s reason for not wanting to be together felt incredibly contrived, as did a lot of other parts of this book. On top of that, both of the main characters have a disdain for privileged people, but make their money off working for them. They’re both lawyers with very wealthy clients, and I have no idea of why the went into law. David is a bit more understandable because it’s fleetingly mentioned that he does pro-bono work, but Isla’s job is pretty much a gopher for rich people. Why would you surround yourself with that when you have such issues with that demographic? All it did was highlight how judgmental, and in the end, hypocritical she was, as this story took a turn where Isla was more than happy to take advantage of her client’s privilege to make things go her way. And this was a ‘twist’ that I saw coming from a mile away. And my last gripe is this, but not specific to this author – what is this trend where practically everyone in a story is a jerk or bad guy, unless it’s someone who was a main character in the author’s previous books? All that does is make me think there’s something wrong with the ‘good’ main character they’re writing that they’d surround themselves with people like that.

One star because I made it to the end of this book, and a second because despite my issues with David and Isla, I thought the mystery aspect, while ultimately predictable, was still interesting, as was the exploration of CTE, which is something I’ve never seen before. Assuming Noah gets a book, I will read it as I love his character, but I’ll be skipping out on any others.

| Rating |

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