Review: "A Legal Affair" by N.J. Walters

A Legal Affair by N.J. Walters

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The fifth installment in the Jamesville series, A Legal Affair tells the story of Alabama cop Gill Baron, who was introduced in The Return of Patrick O'Rourke, and Jamesville lawyer Alicia Flint, who was introduced in The Seduction of Shamus O'Rourke.

Gill has just retired from the police force in Alabama after twenty years on the job. He's forty-two years old and slightly burned out, and that's how he ends up in Jamesville for some R&R while he figures out what he's going to do with the rest of his life. Then he meets Alicia, and suddenly he's got more than his professional future to think about...

Alicia has been born and raised in Jamesville, and she's content with her life. A successful lawyer, she's worked hard to build a solid reputation in a small town where being a female lawyer still makes some people raise their eyebrows. So she doesn't date and doesn't indulge in love affairs, but she's starting to feel restless. Her battery-operated toy isn't helping anymore. She needs more. And more is what she gets when she meets Gill...

Gill and Alicia are instantly attracted to each other, and act on it. They're strangers, and she doesn't want more than a one-night stand with him, but she's in for a surprise if she thinks she can shake him off once he finds out who she is. He wants to pursue a relationship with her, but she's afraid to risk her reputation. So where does that leave them?

This was only an OK read to me. Gill and Alicia were nice, but I didn't connect much with them. I couldn't understand Alicia's train of thought: one moment, she was saying she wasn't the type of woman to have a one-night stand with a stranger; the next, she was boldly taking Gill, a complete stranger, to her home - danger, danger! - and getting down and dirty with him. Oh, I know all about becoming overcome with lust and forgetting who you are and what you stand for, but I didn't buy it. The problem is, the whole story felt rushed, it lacked real character development, and the conflict was "forced".

Overall, this wasn't up to par with the previous books in the series. I hope this was just a minor bump in the road and the next books get the series back on track.



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