Shayla Black
Books: Romance
Scandal Never Sleeps (2015)
Scandal Never Sleeps (2015) with Lexi Blake
Gabriel
Bond is burying his best friend. Power and wealth has always been his,
and he and his friends learned to wield that power from a young age. But
that didn't stop Mad from dying, and it isn't going to stop someone
from trying to frame Gabe for murder.
Everly Parker was Maddox Crawford's rising star, and his friendship with her caused all kinds of speculation, because Mad didn't have female friends–he only had conquests. But he was Eve's friend, and she mourns him, and now she wants to know who killed him.
This was a frustrating story. I like mysteries and thrillers, so I thought maybe a contemporary romance that was also a thriller might be interesting.
The problem is that I don't much care for rich playboys, and Gabe and his friends are all overly-rich playboys.
On the other hand, I really liked Eve, who was smart and competent and very good at her job. She was the reason I kept reading the story, even as I got fed up with Gabriel's wealth and privilege.
And Gabe's stupidity didn't help matters. His refusal to believe that Eve wasn't boinking Mad was pretty unforgivable, especially since she 1) told him and 2) had (somewhat) physical evidence she hadn't recently been in an active sexual relationship. Eve's willingness to forgive him spoke entirely of her qualities. His excuse of worry for his sister only gets him so far.
I also didn't find the mystery very compelling–parts of it felt obvious to me, but there were also leaps of logic and discovery that were nonsensical. WHY did the police publicly drag Gabriel to the station? Why would they burn down Mad's house on the chance that what they were looking for might happen to be there and might be destroyed? The fire made little sense to me, since it drew attention to the death (that was supposed to look like an accident) and didn't seem likely to solve the problem of destroying what they wanted destroyed.
So, Everly being awesome didn't make up for the other weaknesses in the story.
Publisher: Berkley
Rating: 5/10