Publisher: Samhain
Publish Date: January 21st
How I got this book: eARC from publisher
Rearranging your cheating boyfriend’s family jewels isn’t a crime—unless your boyfriend is an Arizona state senator. And he happens to have a bullet in his chest.
Caught at the scene of the crime, Maggie Mae Castro is the only suspect, and the only one who saw the senator’s real killer—the skank ho he was cheating on her with.
FBI Special Agent Clive Poole has been shadowing the senator’s every move for nearly a year. He’s wanted Maggie from afar and knows she didn’t kill the senator, but with temptation close enough to touch, it’s now his job to protect her from danger.
Maggie finds herself falling for a man who knows everything about her, from her juvie record to her shoe size. But when they learn the senator was not what he seemed, and Maggie becomes the target of not one, but two killers bent on hiding their secrets, keeping Maggie safe is going to be even more difficult for Clive than sticking to his “hands off” policy.
Product Warnings
Contains inappropriate make-out sessions, flying bullets, a senator with secrets, designer shoe abuse, and a vegetarian Special Agent who’s incredibly attracted to a woman who slathers her bacon cheeseburgers with PB&J. We’re talking about Maggie Mae Castro here—you never know what’s going to go down.
*Blurb from Goodreads*
This blurb seemed like it would be right up my alley, snarky heroine, badass hero, and a suspense plot to keep me on my toes. However, this book didn’t live up to my expectations.
Maggie has been dating a Senator for over a year now, and when she finds him cheating on her, she is pretty much over the guy. But finding him murdered isn’t what Maggie wanted either, especially when she is the prime suspect. Thankfully, FBI Agent Clive was following her and able to provide an alibi.
Clive has wanted Maggie since the first moment he started shadowing her. Finding out she had nothing to do with the Senator’s shady business deals was a relief, getting to spend time and care for her was his dream and nightmare all at the same time. As the killer realizes Maggie is the main witness to his crime, her life is in more danger than she ever imagined.
Let me start by saying this book is REALLY short. We’re talking around 50 pages or so. For how intensive the blurb made this book sound, it shouldn’t be a surprise that so much of the actual story takes place off the page. However, I was kind of shocked at just how much was behind the scenes. I felt like we were a little jipped on just how much of the story was told to us. I wanted to get in on the pulse pounding action, I wanted the suspense give me heart palpitations. Instead, we had a passing mention of all the good stuff, and it was almost like we were given an overview of what happened. Not fun for me to read. 🙁
However, I did enjoy Maggie’s character. She was a bit of a snarky and sarcastic heroine that I knew I would have loved even more if we had gotten more of a chance to know her. She was both sweet and caring and also a little cocky. She made me laugh and I thought she was a wonderful character. I know this is going to be a series, so I’m sure her character will be flushed out a bit more, so I can only hope that readers get to know even more about her.
Clive was sweet, but didn’t really stick out in my mind after putting down the book. He didn’t have that air of badass about him that I was expecting, and unfortunately there wasn’t anything special about him that made him stick out in my mind after I was finished with the story. It was a bit disappointing to say that there wasn’t really anything bad about him, but nothing great either.
The romance was the main focus of the 50 page story, and even that kinda fell short for me. It wasn’t that the romance wasn’t good, or that the writing or character development wasn’t good. There just wasn’t enough time for Yardley to cram everything in that would have made this book spectacular.
All in all I was pretty disappointed with this book. Again, it’s not like the writing or editing was bad, there just wasn’t enough story to work for me. I am a big fan of novellas, however the story has to have enough meat on it in order for it to grab my attention, and this just didn’t make the cut.
I give Wake Up Maggie a D+