• Home
  • ABOUT
  • Contact
  • Reviews By Genre
    • Black Romance
    • Contemporary
    • Cowboys & Westerns
    • Erotic
    • Historical
    • New Adult
    • Paranormal
    • Romantic Elements
    • Science Fiction/Fantasy
    • Suspense
  • Reviews by Theme
    • Celebrities
    • Harlequin Category
    • Holiday
    • LGBTQIA
    • Low Heat
    • Millionaires & Billionaires
    • Motorcycle Club
    • Multicultural
      • Black
      • East Asian
      • South Asian
      • Latinx
      • Interracial
    • Novellas & Anthologies
    • Royalty
    • Small Town
    • Sports
  • Reviews By Trope

Romance and Sensibility

From First Page To HEA

4 stars, Contemporary, Millionaires & Billionaires, Review

A Lot Like Love by Julie James

October 19, 2017 Leave a Comment

Rating: ★★★★ | 274 pages | Berkley Sensation | Contemporary | 3/1/2011

 

Jordan Rhodes may be a billionaire heiress but she’s most content spreading her love of wine at her little wine shop in Chicago, DeVine Cellars. She can say the same for her twin brother, Kyle, who is currently serving time in federal prison for hacking into Twitter.

When FBI agent Nick McCall swaggers into DeVine Cellars and asks her to help get an FBI agent into an exclusive wine party in exchange for her brother’s freedom, she has no choice but to agree. After all what can one fake date with an undercover FBI agent possibly lead to ?

Julie James was one of the first romance authors I ever read. I enjoyed her then and nearly 4 dozen romance novels later James is still at the top of my list. She does such a good job blending romance, a crime plot, cheeky humor and snappy dialogue into an addictive readable package. Her pacing really works for me, the characters don’t usually get together until about 60% into the book, giving the relationships time to breathe and other plots to develop..

I love some good competency porn and James delivers it with Jordan’s wine business. It’s always fun when I’m done reading and feel like yeah, I could do the thing. I especially loved that Jordan wasn’t a wine snob, I liked to think she wouldn’t judge me for $5 box wine I got from Aldi. There is so much detail about wine tasting and wine business, at one point the characters go to a winery and I felt like I was there.

That said, I am starting to notice a little bit of formulaic-ness with how the crimes are solved and at times Nick came off as a little overly macho at times. Like, I’m sorry watching Dancing With The Stars is to effeminate for you.

There are a lot of very specific references to the show Lost in here…it makes the book feel kind of dated.

Currently Reading

Kat
Jess

A spin-off of Books and Sensibility, this blog was created in 2015 to talk exclusively about romance novels--From the first page to HEA !

Follow Us on Bloglovin’

Follow

Subscribe !

Reviews By Rating

  • 1 Star
  • 2 Star
  • 3 Star
  • 4 Star
  • 5 Star
  • Unrated

Search

Book Blog

Blog Archive

Abou

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
@romanceandsensibility

I came across this trope a lot this year -Kat #spicybooks #booktok

♬ Still Into You Drill - ShoBeatz

Social Slider

  • Time for a cover reveal! Wall Street Journal bestselling author @kennedyryan1 is excited to reveal the gorgeous special edition paperback
  • The small town of Honey Hill isn’t big enough to handle the feud between Mayor Lunden Pierce and Quade Cannon—-the
  • Picked this up on a trip to 2nd & Charles . Can’t wait to dive into this series - J
  • Welcome to the snack / book pairing challenge! To enter, tell me what snack you are pairing with your current
  • Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’re joining us tomorrow for the Black Friday Readathon. You can still sign up using the
  • I’m ready for the Black Friday Readathon! If you want to join us and read all day on Black Friday
  • It
  • It
Design by SkyandStars.co

Copyright © 2023