Review of Trial by Fire by Carsen Taite
A few weeks ago I was saying in a review that I love when writers bring their expertise in a subject matter into their novels. Carsen Taite is one of them, as a retired criminal defence attorney, her legal thrillers are unique in our genre. I’m always happy to pick up one of her books that feature heavily on law.
Attorney Wren Bishop is having problems adjusting from her lucrative job in a big firm to the public defender’s office. To make things worse, her first case pits her against Lennox Roy, a gorgeous yet fierce prosecutor with a reputation for winning cases and breaking hearts. They are on opposites sides of the court but in the face of a mysterious arson case, they’ll be forced to cooperate and admit a mutual attraction…
This is book one of Taite’s Courting Danger Romance series of at least two books. The next one is Trial and Error coming out in June 2022. Carsen Taite is a very prolific author, she has published more than 30 novels. Her work can be divided into legal thrillers and more traditional romances. Personally, I prefer the former to the latter, I think Ms. Taite brings something distinctive and special when she writes about law, something that tells her apart from the rest of the lesfic authors. I believe that’s when she is at her best. Luckily for me, this is one of those books.
This novel has the perfect balance between legal thriller and romance. Ms. Taite takes the reader to different legal proceedings and court action, all easy to understand for a layperson like me. It felt a bit like watching a courtroom movie. This is an opposites-attract story, not only for the personalities and backgrounds of the main characters but also because they are on opposite sides of the courtroom. However, to make the romance work, they have to find some common ground in their professional lives as well as personal. That’s when a sort of “collaboration” happens while working as opposing counsels. Ms. Taite clarifies in the plot that those moments are rare in the middle of a case and despite I found it strange, it made sense in the context of the story.
The main characters are both well fleshed with their strengths and shortcomings and they have great chemistry together. Ms. Taite has sometimes the tendency to rush the endings and maybe the I love yous were a bit too soon, but it didn’t matter that much to me, maybe because there were other things happening along with the romance. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment in this series which will feature Lennox’s best friend, Judge Nina Aguilar. I hope that it’s a legal thriller like this one.
Fans of Ms. Taite’s will be delighted to catch up with Morgan and Parker from It Should Be a Crime, and Skye and Aimee from The Best Defense. Hopefully, they will appear again in the next book in the series. In the meantime, this one is very enjoyable. 4.5 stars.
