Notorious
By Diana Palmer
Release Date: June 15, 2021
Ebook Available from WV Reads!
1.5 Stars - A cowboy tale from Palmer's long line of long, tall Texans. This time a lawyer, Nick, is matched up with Gaby, an heiress in danger from her greedy family. I suppose if you're a fan of Palmer's series, this will check all the boxes. But I quickly remembered why I am not and felt like the negatives outweighed positives here. Not even suspense or romantic, a lot of angst and drama.
Diana Palmer's from an old school romance class. All her blurbs and book descriptions make me think YES. And I can never remember why I don't read them. Then, unfortunately, I do. Gaby's traumatic childhood shows up in the first chapter, and I admit it's harrowing. But she's also pretty snobby and a bit hard to warm up to. I just couldn't find anything relatable about her. Nick's relationship with his niece isn't exactly endearing like I think it was supposed to be. The teenager is clearly lost and he's not giving her the kind of attention she needs. Outside of that, he's a buff, tough, smart, supposedly ruthless lawyer. He's representing the dark side in this case Gaby's grandfather.
There were so many issues that became apparent quickly that I was not going to enjoy slogging through this relatively short romance. I don't mind some of the tropes at all: cowboy lawyer, virgin heroine, evil relatives. Actually, the blurb really had me thinking I would finally read another Palmer book and like it. Wrong. The heroes always turn out to be too old for the heroine, making the whole innocent twenty-something thing a little creepy. He's always protective, just not so much of her feelings. Although, she does have a lot of them. The couple tends to blow hot and cold until the great, big sex scene. And it's not like these books are erotica. That's basically it. As for the plot, it was really hard to believe Gaby was falling for her grandfather's attorney who is much older and sort of weighed down more than she is. But hey, it's romance fiction, so maybe I'm just too picky. I'd say if you love Diana Palmer's formulatic writing style, the way some do Danielle Steel or Robyn Carr then go for it, nothing to lose here.
(NS)
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