{"id":1069,"date":"2018-01-28T11:19:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T11:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2018-01-28T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T11:19:15","slug":"review-guilty-as-sin-by-rosalind-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/01\/28\/review-guilty-as-sin-by-rosalind-james\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Guilty as Sin’ by Rosalind James"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My last book of the year, bringing my total to 60, and it was a good one. I\u2019ve read a couple of other books by Rosalind James which were straightforward contemporary romances, but this was more of a thriller romance, and it had a bit more bite than the others. The premise is that identical twins\u2026 yes, yes, I know, straight from the bargain rack of Cliches R Us, but stay with me. Identical twins Lily and Paige Hollander decide to swap places for a while. Lily runs a small-holding and a sexy lingerie shop in rural Montana, and is being pressured to sell her land to make way for a ski resort. Paige is a cop from San Francisco who was shot in a messy incident which saw her partner and the victim of a domestic assault both shot dead. Cue suspension and enquiries and the usual palaver. Both sisters want an escape from their routine lives, so Lily disappears for a restful holiday and Paige takes over the goats, chickens and bras while she heals, both mentally and physically.<\/p>\n

The early part of the book, which deals with the twins and their various backgrounds, was very confusing to me, but I trusted the author to get me through the sticky parts and she did. By the time Paige is settled in and trying to milk the goats, it\u2019s all plain sailing. Or it may just be that this is where the hero makes his appearance. All James\u2019 heroes (extrapolating wildly from the three books I\u2019ve read!) tend to be big, muscular men, rather intimidating in some ways, but very gentle with the heroine. They tend to be a bit too perfect for my taste, but I guess a little wish fulfilment is allowed in a romance. There are quite a few graphic sex scenes, but nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

The thriller part of the book builds nicely from a \u2018that\u2019s odd\u2019 low-key level before escalating nicely to the physical violence stage. Paige and her man (Jace) always respond sensibly and intelligently to these various threats, and nothing felt over the top. Well, except the dog. Tobias must be the world\u2019s most intelligent animal, that\u2019s all I have to say about that. The climax of the thriller part of the story is very slightly a damp squib, but maybe that\u2019s just sour grapes on my part because I didn\u2019t guess the identity of the baddie.<\/p>\n

The romance\u2026 well, they lost a few brownie points for not just sitting down and talking things through, but it all came right in the end. There was a schmaltzy epilogue, which felt a bit gratuitous to me, but if you\u2019re a fan of schmaltzy epilogues, this is a humdinger (translation: I cried). An enjoyable read, both as a romance and as a thriller. Four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last book of the year, bringing my total to 60, and it was a good one. I\u2019ve read a couple of other books by Rosalind James which were straightforward contemporary romances, but this was more of a thriller romance, and it had a bit more bite than the others. The premise is that identical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-james"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}