Southern Fried Reads

I've officially finished my buddy read with A Monster Called Me and we wanted to read something romantic for the month of February. So a Lori Foster book fit the bill!

I'll be honest, I was skeptical of this book in the very beginning. I listen to all of my books through Audible because it allows me to multitask. The narrator for Hard Justice does a phenomenal job of providing a voice for Justice. It's a masculine laid back New Yorker drawl. But good lord, the voice he provided for Fallon and the other women in the book was awful. It was an overly lispy high pitched voice that sounded terrible. It came off as a bad memory of drunk gals in the club whining, "I just wanna dance!" after their fifth vodka cranberry. I wish the narrator would have just kept his voice normal for the female parts of this book. It would have been way better.

Beside the audio aspect, the book started off rough for me. I had to take a step back and remind myself I was reading a sappy romantic novel that isn't exactly supposed to be held to high class literary works (Not like that's my cup of tea either, but you get the point). Fallon's mega naive ways come off as a little over the top in the beginning. But once the first few chapters were out of the way, I started to adore this book.

Foster paints each detail so perfectly that it does become very immersive. She doesn't sacrifice any of her characters to just being stand ins. They all have their own side stories (which I later found out there are books for!). I'm the kind of person who LOVES the side stories of books. I find myself enjoying side characters more than the main characters sometimes. So you can bet I'm going to be reading the rest of the characters books. 

By the time the book ended, I was left wanting more. I wanted to see Justice and Fallon get married, have kids, take vacations, grow old. This book was a deliciously cheesy and savory book to read for fun. If you don't take it seriously, you'll love it.