Hero: Julia Cameron
Heroine: Roane Jameson
Grade: 4.5 out of 5
Can missing family ties replace murder as a common bond?
Bereft of family as a child, Julia Cameron finally has everything she’s ever wanted. Her billion dollar racing empire and FASPRO team in line for their first championship seems the trophy in the center ring. But, her enviable life came at the price of her adopted parent’s lives, and now Julia has also inherited the responsibility of her teenage twin brothers.
Roane Jameson, the new head of FASPRO security, is determined to solve the Cameron case, and fast. Desperate to keep this job to pay his child support, he needs to create a glowing reputation to conceal his shadowy past. He’s willing to do whatever it takes. How hard can it be when he’s only got one suspect?
This was a really fast read for me. I’ve never read anything from Lyrical Press (atleast as far as I can remember) but I was up for new to me stuff so I checked this one out. Center Ring starts off with the murder of Butch and Lacey Cameron. They are Julia, Levi and Colin’s adoptive parents and they loved their kids and it was obvious within those first few pages that they were loved by their adopted parents as well.
So both Butch and Lacey are killed in the first few pages of the book and the rest of the book is spent with the hero, Roane trying to pin the murder on the only suspect they have, Julia. And Julia is trying to find out who killed the only two people she’s ever trusted and loved.
I’ll tell you one thing, the whole storyline has been done over and over again but it still made for an interesting story because I kept turning the pages of this one.
Roane Jameson is divorced with three daughters. He’s trying to pay his child support and stay out of his ex wife’s way because she’s a big time bitch and I can’t blame him. What’s weird about Roane is usually, I hecka love a hero right from the very beginning. Right from the very beginning, I can tell that I’m going to LUHOVE the hell out of the hero but that wasn’t the case with Roane. The first time I met him, I thought, meh and then a few chapters later, I got interested but I wasn’t full on in heat mode like I usually am for the heroes that I read about and then every time he kissed Julia and then let the doubts fall into him made me want to bite his face off. I mean, if it was Julia doing all the kissing and if it was Julia throwing herself at him which made him a man by kissing her back then I would understand but those first couple of kisses they had were started by him and it irritated me to no end to have to keep reading about him kissing her and then immediately think, damn she kisses good but that doesn’t mean she’s not the killer. It’s like, if you think she’s the killer than keep your lips away from hers, you dumb shit and find some damn evidence that will prove that she’s the killer, quit trying to picture her naked if you think she’s the damn killer, idiot.
But then I got deeper and deeper into the story and as much as I thought I didn’t care about Roane, all of that began to fall away and I got him. I started to like him and then I started to like him so hot damn much that I was rooting for him. I wanted him to get his shot at that happy ending and I wanted him to win the battle for his girls, I wanted everything for him and it was like, I needed to see all the bad things that I couldn’t stand about him to appreciate him as a whole and by the end of the book, I was totally and completely in love with Roane Jameson.
Then there was Julia Cameron. Cold and aloof, Julia Cameron. Adopted daughter of Butch and Lacey Cameron and the apple of her father’s eye. She was the strong one in her family. She knew what was being said and what everyone thought about her but she held her head high because she needed to be strong for her two younger brothers, Colin and Levi. They needed her to be strong for them and they needed her to be there for him, to make sure that they would always be together and she did everything in her power to do right by them. She was a great heroine, a heroine that I liked right from the jump.
It was the complete opposite of Roane with Julia for me. I liked her immediately. I didn’t think she was a phony and I didn’t think she was “meh”, I thought she was a great person and a great sister to the boys and I thought she was a great daughter to Butch and Lacey. Her family meant a great deal to her and I loved seeing the Julia that not everyone got to see, I loved seeing her with her hair down and with that easy smile that came with people she knew and I loved how even though she didn’t trust Roane, after that trip to his court date in Iowa, I loved how she offered to help him get his girls back without flinching. She saw how much he wanted them in his life and she extended that helping hand to him and wanted to help him. She was a great heroine throughout the whole story and I really dug her character.
But one thing that drove me batty with this book is, what the hell is a high braid? Julia had a high braid in her hair and I tried to picture it in my head. A high braid? Like the braid started at the top of her head but wouldn’t that be a french braid? Meh, whatever, I just thought that was odd.
I really enjoyed this story. After the first hump in the road, it’s really easy to get lost into the story of Julia and Roane. I think Sutton Fox did a great job of hooking me into the story once I was hooked and she kept my attention throughout the entire book. I wasn’t thinking of twenty million things while reading this one. I wasn’t planning what book I was going to read after reading this one, I was completely absorbed in this story so kudo’s to Ms. Fox for that.
But….
As much as I loved this story and everything, I was pissed to high heaven that the story of Roane’s family was left out to dry. I kept waiting for that scene when Julia was going to take his bitch of an ex wife down and Roane would be reunited with his daughters and he would finally be at peace with his real family since that was such a big part of the struggle he had in the book. I wanted to make sure that I knew the bitch ex wife would not get another penny from him until she let him get visitation rights, I wanted his name cleared of any wrong doing and I felt cheated when I got none of that and I’m afraid that affects my grade on this book because as much as I enjoyed it, I still felt pissed off that, Roane’s part of the story was never finished. Yeah, he got his happily ever after but he didn’t get closure. I wanted that closure for him so bad that I was rooting for it throughout the whole book, I never once thought I’d never get it and man that just disappoints the heck out of me.
I didn’t know this was the second book in the series but I don’t think you need to read the first book to enjoy this one. I enjoyed it a whole bunch but was disappointed as well. I would have enjoyed the book so much more if Roane could have gotten his closure where his real family was concerned and I would have enjoyed this book a whole lot more if Julia could have kicked his ex wife’s ass for all of the crap that she put Roane through. I wanted that bitch to pay but she didn’t and it made me feel like the bad guys in this world can get away with anything and bloodthirsty wench that I am, I love me some payback scenes.
Should you read the book? Yeah, if you can get over some of the scenes that drove me crazy then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this story. It was an overall good read, it just could have been better with some additions. So yeah, I give this book a 4 out of 5 but it would have been a 4.75 or a 5 had I been happy with the outcome of Roane’s family problems.
This book is available from Lyrical Press. You can buy it here in e-format.
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