Betrayed by Lisa Scottoline
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If you have a Y chromosome you’ll want to keep a barf bag handy for this one. It’s mostly about women “being there for each other”, the relationship between a mother and daughter, aunt and niece, sister and sister, and girlfriend/boyfriend. Still, I urge you to suppress the gag reflex and keep reading. There is a decent mystery and action scene waiting for you if you can endure the girliness.
Judy, the main character, is a lawyer with some very unadmirable qualities. She’s in love with an inconsiderate Neanderthal of a boyfriend, she doesn’t want to try civil cases involving measuring damages in a product liability case, and she acts like a rebellious, whining teen half the time, including to her boss. She wants her law practice to be warm and fuzzy, not about money. Maybe she should have gone to puppy-cuddling school instead of law school.
The author writes with journeyman (journeywoman? journeyperson?) skill but I found none of the characters particularly likeable. Judy’s mother and her boyfriend are especially obnoxious and she isn’t much better. The legal stuff was done pretty well, though, which rescued this one for me, and as I said, when the author finally got around to the mystery and final chase scene, that was also well done.