Far from my favourite by Lee Winter, but as usual form the author it was, for the most part, funny, interesting, clever and heartfelt.

There were some problems though.

Some of the racial dynamics regarding the Maori characters was pretty iffy, especially that the “good” Maori characters didn’t have traditional facial tattoos, but the “bad” Maori characters did. And given the sky high rates of police harassment and incarceration of Maori in NZ, having the white cop be fostered by a Maori family who support her being  a cop, and having her harassing a, seemingly entirely, Maori gang for dealing meth when they weren’t actually doing that, feels really uncomfortable.

It also felt totally unbelievable that Sky and Bob, both respected veterans of the entertainment industry, and Kev, who finally has found a job that he loves, would risk their careers by performing sabotage costing a film presumably tens of thousands of dollars, if not far more, as well as risking fines or prison sentences for wasting police time, just to matchmake two lesbians who had only just met, no matter how drunk they were when they first concocted the idea. Yes, this is a comedy, but that is just so egregious, and doesn’t fit the level of realism of the rest of the book, that it totally broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Maybe if the tone of the book were similar to I Dare You To Love Me by Lori G Matthews it would have worked, but not the tone of this book.

I do always love a story where a cop quits their job though, so I’m glad both of Lee Winter’s cop MCs do just that.

It was great to catch up with Summer and Bess, although I’m a bit confused on where in the timeline between Breaking Character and Skye Storm’s Ultimate Pool Party this landed? It sounded like they hadn’t gone to England yet, but they also seemed very out?