Review: Hot Asset by Lauren Layne
This is a romance between a SEC agent and the wall street dude she is investigating. I picked it up because book three was recommended on Fated Mates and because the audiobook was free on audible. I also just saw it was on KU, and I do think I would have enjoyed the book very slightly more if I had read it with my eyes and not gone the audio route.
Both Samantha Cook and Zachary Webber were totally great narrators, but their voices are not super well suited for each other. Cook has a very polished 'NPR' vibe with her voice and Webber is a bit more conversational. They just didn't match very well and it took me over half the book to no longer find this jarring.
But on to the content of the book! The romance was fine, I didn't think Layne really gave the couple enough emotional tension and internal conflict. They had some, I just was not very engaged and wanted more from the pair. I also don't like the way Layne writes romantic encounters. I kept saying the word "eww" out loud. This could have been the fact that it was audio and I don't typically listen to romance on audio. But I did over all think the pair were fine, just a touch boring.
I do really dislike the way this author approached the 'playboy who reforms for this one woman' trope. It leaned pretty hard into all other women were not good enough to actually capture my attention long term, I needed someone who would actually challenge me. And someone who didn't dress super sluttily. Which is pretty sexist, you can have a dude be a bit of a slut without being mean to the women he slept with, that is totally acceptable.
Another really conservative aspect of this book is how it views criminality. There is a tertiary character who is a defense attorney whose main character trait is that she only accepts cases of innocent people. Which clearly was written by an author who disagrees with the ideal of innocent until proven guilty and sees attorneys who defend guilty people as immoral. Which is indicative of a VERY different relationship to the judicial system than I have. It doesn't feel that out there of me to want the state to have to prove guilt in as equal a playing field as is possible. You cannot do that without defense attorneys who do their job for all their clients, not just ones who are sexy and being framed.
I didn't love the politics underlying this book and I didn't love the romance. So I, shockingly, didn't love the book. It wasn't horrible, the writing was mostly fine, the plot moves quickly (though it took way to long to introduce the guy who framed the hero, and he was immediately obvious to the reader). I might finish the trilogy because it was a quick read and I already have the whole trilogy. But I am not quite sure yet.
I gave this book two stars.
