Pamela's Reviews > A Lot like Love

The woman who sat in front of me on my flight from Detroit to Denver is very lucky I had this book loaded on my Kindle. I loved the story, and it distracted me from the misery of having a seat back rammed against my knees for three hours. You know the book has got to be good.

A LOT LIKE LOVE tells the story of Jordan Rhodes, heiress to half of a billion-dollar fortune, and Nick McCall, FBI agent. Rhodes isn't a prissy heiress whose biggest worries are ruining her manicure or being seen with the right people; she's a solid person who's down to earth and who has worked to build her own successes in life. She owns an upscale wine store — can they actually serve wine in a wine store in Illinois? They can't in Colorado — and is an expert on fermented grape. Her social circle includes someone the FBI would like to know more about.

Nick McCall makes Jordan an offer she can't refuse to win her cooperation in helping him establish covert surveillance — i.e., bug — of this person of interest. And thus Jordan and McCall are forced to deal with one another. They trade sarcasm and quips — a kind of banter at which Julie James excels — and slowly fall into lust and then love with one another.

So, I have to ask myself whether deep in her heart, the attorney side of Ms. James has a hankering for suspense. James writes contemporary romance, but both books I've read would satisfy fans of romantic suspense, as well.

This is the first non-attorney heroine that James has written, and I have to give her props for doing that. It would be like me writing romantic suspense novel without a journalist heroine, something I haven't been brave enough to do yet. I think she does a splendid job of it, clearly having done her research into wine. I found myself wanting to write down tips, which I KNOW other readers have done, as the most frequent highlights in the Kindle version involved the various steps of wine tasting. So James is helping to launch a new cadre of oinophiles, which is all to the good.

Romantic fiction and wine go well together — almost as well as romance and wine.

I found myself giggling out loud at some points, which no one heard because planes are so noisy. I felt the characters were believable and endearing, including secondary characters, and I enjoyed seeing Cameron and Jack again. I got a real kick out of Nick's relationship with his long-suffering mother.

Also, I found the sex scenes very hot and fun to read. That's important.

And I'm just so grateful to James for writing this book because otherwise I probably would have gotten thrown off my flight by TSA for yelling at the person in front of me. I need to go back now and read her first two titles.