Hard Justice by Lori Foster

First off, let me shout from the rooftops that I'm so utterly elated that I came across a copy of a Lori Foster novel pre-publication.  It was like walking down the street and coming across a $100 bill.  I might have screamed.  Anyways, on to the review:

I love brownies.  I know what a brownie is going to taste like before I eat it.  It’s going to be delicious.  If someone offers me a brownie I won’t, I can’t, turn it down, even though there’s no real surprise in what I’m going to be tasting.  (Does this seem confusing?  Wait, let me try and tie it back to the review).

I know what a Lori Foster novel is going to entail.  When you’ve read enough Lori Foster novels (as I have) you start to notice that a good number of them tend to follow the same sort of layout.  I can anticipate the rise and fall, the climax, the drama, the descriptions of the men, etc.  Does this mean I don’t love reading her books?  Of course not.  I will read everything she puts out forever (hello, brownies), but do I get the same excitement all the time?  No.  Some series I love more than others.  Some men I love more than others.

Hard Justice, the newest novel in the Body Armor series, is the age old tale of ‘girl gets a body guard.  Girl falls for body guard.  Fallon Wade is no ordinary heiress, Justice Wallington discovers when he meets his newest client.  He’s expecting stuck up, selfish, and irritating, but he’s pushed off balance by a delightfully sweet and innocent young woman.  All Fallon Wade wants to do is spread her wings and explore the world around her, something that she has been unable to do since the accident, an accident that has left a permanent mark on her.  Justice wants to get to the bottom of Fallon Wade and all those secrets she’s harboring, but figuring out what she’s hiding is going to have to wait, because someone is targeting Fallon and things are getting dangerous.

Fallon and Justice aren’t my favorite couple by Lori Foster (that award goes to Avery and Rowdy from Getting Rowdy.  Am I drooling?  It feels like I’m drooling), but they’re cute and the passion is there.  It was a delight to watch the character development between the two of them and to see them accept one another’s flaws.  I don’t necessarily feel that I connected with either of them, but I don’t think that makes them bad characters, because there’s definitely characters out there that I connect with that others don’t.  I’m not a huge fan of people meeting and then three days late being madly in love, but I get that romance novels sometimes need to follow that road.  All characters can’t be lifelong friends just discovering their attraction for one another, ya know?

I think that the drama was exciting enough.  It wasn’t jaw dropping, and perhaps it was a little been there-done that, but I still couldn’t figure out who the real enemy until embarrassingly close to the end.  My stomach didn’t twist with anxiety about what was going to happen, but it was comfortable and sometimes that’s all you need from a romance novel.  

Over all, I really feel that this book could have been more.  It felt like a bit of a filler novel between two more exciting books (I think I just really prefer the Love Undercover Series to the Body Armour series in general), but it wasn’t a waste of time.  It was a happy read that gave me a good distraction for an afternoon.

If you’re a fan of Lori Foster, you’ll want to read it.  If you’ve never read Lori Foster before, start elsewhere (aka. Love Undercover series because it’s my favorite and oh my god, those men are sexy).

Coming out: March 21, 2017!