Author: Sandra Brown
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: August 2015
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Buy The Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: Crawford Hunt wants his daughter back. Following the death of his wife four years ago, Crawford, a Texas Ranger, fell into a downward spiral that left him doing deskwork rather than fieldwork, and with his five-year-old daughter Georgia in the custody of her grandparents. But Crawford has cleaned up his act, met all the court-imposed requirements, and now the fate of his family lies with Judge Holly Spencer.
Holly, ambitious and confident, temporarily occupies the bench of her recently deceased mentor. With an election upcoming, she must prove herself worthy of making her judgeship permanent. Every decision is high stakes. Despite Crawford's obvious love for his child and his commitment to being an ideal parent, Holly is wary of his checkered past. Her opinion of him is radically changed when a masked gunman barges into the courtroom during the custody hearing. Crawford reacts instinctually, saving Holly from a bullet.
But his heroism soon takes on the taint of recklessness. The cloud over him grows even darker after he uncovers a horrifying truth about the courtroom gunman and realizes that the unknown person behind the shooting remains at large . . .and a threat.
Catching the real culprit becomes a personal fight for Crawford. But pursuing the killer in his customary diehard fashion will jeopardize his chances of gaining custody of his daughter, and further compromise Judge Holly Spencer, who needs protection not only from an assassin, but from Crawford himself and the forbidden attraction between them.
FRICTION will keep you on the edge of your seat with breathtaking plot twists and the unforgettable characters that make Sandra Brown one of the world's best-loved authors. It is an extraordinary novel about the powerful ties that bind us to the ones we love and the secrets we keep to protect them.
My Thoughts: Enjoyable story with plenty of plot twists and turns to keep me on the edge of my seat anticipating what would happen next. Texas Ranger Crawford Hunt is in family court to fight to regain custody of his daughter from his in-laws. Long story short, after the sudden death of his wife, Crawford gave temporary custody to his in-laws as he wasn’t quite up to the job of being a good parent. Unfortunately, his father-in-law has always hated him and is using Crawford’s past and even his present as a tool to label him as unfit so that Crawford loses custody permanently. When a gunman bursts into the courtroom firing several rounds striking the bailiff, Crawford does what he automatically is conditioned to do. He tackles the judge and shields her from the shooter. After the shooter takes off, Crawford pursues him and ends up on the roof with a man holding the gun. A SWAT sniper takes out the man holding the gun. Case closed, end of story, right? Nope…not even close.
It takes a while to get there but finally the story takes off when Crawford realizes the man who was killed by the SWAT officer is not the man firing the weapon in the courtroom. Who is this guy? How did he end up with the weapon? Naturally, more questions pop up and Crawford is trying to ensure the judge is protected while trying to convince local PD that he did not orchestrate the entire event in the first place. I had a bit of difficulty with that part as it seemed the local detectives came across as complete imbeciles and someone else is going to end up dead at this rate.
Throw into the mix that there is white hot chemistry between Judge Holly Spencer and Crawford and the fact that they are both eyewitnesses to a shooting make their one-on-one involvement on any level a conflict of interest. There appears to be no reason or connection between the man killed on the roof of the courthouse and Holly so that made investigating the motive and reason behind the attack all the more perplexing.
This story moved much slower than I normally like but once it kicked into gear, it was good. The attraction between Crawford and Holly was well written and gives the reader an excellent sense of the conflict they both feel but cannot deny their attraction. All of the characters are well developed and the story itself was credible.
The identity of the mastermind behind the attack is revealed early in the story but the connection between them and the target remained unclear until the end. Once that was revealed, I was a little disappointed as I was expecting something much more intense to match such a well-structured attack in an open courtroom.
My Final Verdict: This story wasn’t my favorite by this author, but fans of romance with suspense will find this enjoyable.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of Friction from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment