I thought about doing individual reviews for each of these books, but instead I think I'll start a tag for books with love interests who are such insufferable, arrogant assholes that I stopped reading. Is this something left over from the het romance 'bad boy' trope? Why? WHY?? Are there really women out there who long to be insulted by a brooding jerk? Apparently the answer to that is a resounding YES! Clearly I am not the target audience for these books. Your mileage may vary.

Goldenseal by Gill McKnight seemed promising, but Leone, the wolfie love interest, is such a complete arrogant ass AND a stalker that I just couldn't keep reading. Maybe this combination is sexy to some, but not me. It's especially creepy when you understand the power dynamics here: Leone, a werewolf, is literally capable of tearing Amy to shreds with her superhuman strength so her stalking is more than a little unsettling. The fact that she's a douchecanoe just made me want to throw my kindle out the window. 

Thief of Always by Kim Baldwin and Xenia Alexiou. Again, I really wanted to like this, but the main character, Allegro, is another smug, insufferably arrogant jerk. I get that these books are escapist and therefore not terribly realistic, but she's supposed to be undercover and therefore NOT DRAWING ATTENTION TO HERSELF. Instead she's rude, cocky, and her flirtation with her target/boss borders on sexual harassment. I just don't get it. And I don't understand why she wasn't fired after fifteen minutes. She's supposed to be a handy woman hired after wandering in off the road (!), yet her boss (a COUNTESS!) is making her dinner despite her insults? Yeah, I don't know either. Maybe it's really hard to find good help in the Netherlands?

Deception by Erin O'Reilly

Deception by Erin O'Reilly is part romance, part legal thriller. Don't let the cover fool you. This is not a Western. It's set in the rancher world of Texas, but it's contemporary. Lane wants to be a celebrity lawyer like Nancy Grace and she's planned her education and career to make it happen (even if her plan doesn't make much sense). Bryce wants...well sometimes it seems like she wants to be a badass businesswoman/rancher serial killer (or at the very least a ruthless sociopath) and sometimes it seems she's just emo and wants to be understood. Or maybe Bryce just wants to be alone with her money, her terrible shameful lesbianism, and possibly Lane. She's mysterious.

When Lane gets her dream to leave her job as a rising star ADA in Houston to (inexplicably) partner in some backwater Texas law firm all in the name of furthering her non-existent broadcasting career, she jumps at the chance. When Bryce gets charged with murder almost immediately, it's just too good to be true. When your client is as hot (and rich and photogenic) as Bryce, it's hard to hang on to those ethics things. Who can stand in the way of client/attorney privilege *wink wink*?

Trial, legal semantics, procedures, threats, dirty, dirty lesbians, DNA evidence, blah, blah, blah. Will Bryce's dark secret exonerate her or simply drive them apart? Or just turn out to be pretty much useless. Will every secondary character turn out to be a serial killer/sociopath who's also an upstanding citizen and just misunderstood? Is everyone in this small Texas town a murdering, raping psycho? Probably.

Whatever. This is sort of a legal thriller with sort of a conclusion and a romance that ends up where every lesbian wants: BABIES!!!! What? It's only $4.99 for the ebook.

f/f disclaimer: I should point out that the lez sex in this book is of the purple prose, mystical clouds and unicorns variety. Except when Bryce is having disturbingly creepy serial killer-eqsue sex with a trick in a motel then going to confession because she's a dirty, dirty lezho.