This is a cute story with a murder mystery woven throughout the book. It's full of witty dialogue and the pages just fly.
Sunny Kennedy works as a private investigator much to the dismay of her family members. While it might seem a plus to be a PI with brothers and a father on the police force, it's sometimes a drawback for Sunny. In order to continue working a 26 year old murder case and have access to evidence files, she has to accept a police officer as a partner in working the case.
Enter Judson Blackwolf, an officer working one last case before moving on to Montana. He lost his female partner on a case because she insisted on taking a risk so Judson is naturally overprotective of Sunny. The fact that Sunny is fiercely independent makes for some interesting scenes and chemistry between the two.
There were a couple of things that bothered me that kept me from giving it a 5 star rating. One is the misuse of apostrophe marks. I'm sorry, but it's a pet peeve of mine.
Here are just some of the instances of apostrophe misuse: "...to meet her brother's stares." There's more than one brother so it should be "...to meet her brothers' stares" or if she's only looking at one of her brothers in the room, then it should be "...to meet her brother's stare." "...a friend of her fathers, too old." It should be "...a friend of her father's, too old." "You're pride might be hurt, but..." It should be "Your pride might be hurt, but..." You're is the contraction of you are and you are pride might be hurt makes no sense. "Don't treat me like my brother's, Judson." should be "Don't treat me like my brothers, Judson." "Either you stay at your dads, one of..." should be "Either you stay at your dad's, one of..." "Didn't' Slater feel..." - This is self explanatory. "If she see's either one..." should be "If she sees either one..."
There were also some inconsistencies that pulled me out of the story. Some examples are:
When she's meeting with her brothers and father in the police interrogation room she "...slammed the table top with her fist. ...Her palm stung, but she..." If she hit the table with her fist, why is her palm stinging? It never made contact with the table. The side of her hand did.
Another instance was when Sunny was in Benny's office and had just discovered the love letters from Karina that he kept. She's surprised by Slater and pretends she was just leaving a note for Benny. "...but she grabbed a pen from Benny's desk..." When she finishes the note "Sweat percolated across the back of her neck, she brushed her free hand along the cool skin and tossed the pencil on Benny's desk." The pen suddenly turned into a pencil. Also, personally, when my skin is sweaty, it doesn't feel cool. It's usually hot to the touch.
One final instance was when Sunny gets out of her car at night and Judson is parked across the road about seven cars down from her. Judson watches her get out of the car. Okay he's close enough to see her rounded backside in the limited lighting. She steps up on the sidewalk just as a car fishtails around the corner. A guy gets out of the car and tries to grab Sunny. She tries to fight him off. The whole time she's fighting with the guy, Judson is running toward her. He falls, gets up, and keeps running. By this time the driver of the car gets out and is now fighting with Sunny too. He hits her in the jaw, knocks her out and throws her in their car. Both men get back in the car and drive off. Meanwhile Judson is still running toward Sunny's car and just barely touches the edge of the get away car as it speeds off. Okay, I live in a city where most people have to park on the street. It would not take that long to run the distance of seven parked cars, even if you did fall. I had my nephew count off 7 parked cars on our street and I stood at the other end of those 7 cars. It took him all of 3 minutes by stop watch time to run to me. Even if he had fallen, or pretended to fall, it wouldn't have taken more than 5 minutes to reach me. Yet the scene with Sunny fighting off her abductors and Judson running toward her took 3 whole pages on my Kindle. I had a hard time believing Judson couldn't reach her in time.
One other small thing that bothered me is that Sunny switches back and forth from calling Karina's father Glen or Mr. DeVito. The formality of Mr. DeVito suggests either she doesn't know him that well or she addresses him that way out of respect for his age. I could understand if she just referred to him as Glen because he is a friend of her father's and a former police officer so he might be a friend of the family who she's known her whole life and feels comfortable enough to address him by his first name but the switching back and forth bothered me at times. Either be formal or informal, but not both.
Now after reading all of the above, you might think I didn't really like the book. Nothing could be further from the truth. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have already recommended it to a couple of friends who like romances that have either heroes or heroines who are first responders.