Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Bring to Light
SERIES: London Lies
AUTHOR: C F White
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 269 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 10, 2020
BLURB:
Jackson Young and Fletcher Doherty are back in London and on a mission—to bring to light the murky underbelly of the Charles Payne media empire and, in doing so, get justice for the murder of Tallulah Payne.
It’s not a simple task though. They need proof. They need people to speak up. And they need to keep their hands off each other long enough to track down the other manipulated Lotus Flowers, convince them to come forward and find a way to bring it all to the public. Not so easy when they’re up against the most powerful men in London who are determined to separate and silence them by any means possible.
It’s a race against time, with a deadline not only on their story or their growing relationship but on their entire lives.
REVIEW:
Note: This is the third in a series and should not be read as a standalone.
Fletcher and Jackson have managed to escape from Diego and company in Ireland and have made it back to London. They are following up on their suspicions about Charles Payne and the other involved in the shady dealings. They need to figure out how Payne is getting all the information on Jackson. So they have to start with Jackson’s family. And that doesn’t go too well until they find an unexpected source of potential evidence.
While they also discover that someone close to Fletcher has always had more information and a motive that they realized, the truth is shocking. Mostly to Jackson. But they don’t have time to worry about that. Because not only do they need to get their hands on the rest of the potential evidence, but they’ve now got to race against the clock because someone close to Fletcher may be in danger. All of this pressure can serve to do only one of two things – push them closer together or pull them completely apart. There are a number of twists and turns and some slow going at a few points, but Jackson and Fletcher are playing the game of their lives – and it’s winner take all.
This one was quite a roller coaster ride with a lot of information coming at the reader in a very short period of time. The seedy underbelly of the media/entertainment/power structure is brought out into the open only because of Jackson and Fletchers determination, diligence and persistence. There are quite a few scary moments and Jackson and Fletcher both show what they are really made of. At times it seems like they didn’t stop to consider the consequences of their actions, but the fear and urgency of the situation made that entirely plausible. I liked a lot of the action, but there were a few things that didn’t quite ring true to me for the time period. In 1999, the internet was not as pervasive as it is today. Social media was not the same and while there were things online, it was NOTHING like it is today. Click-bait was not yet a thing. Views and hits were not yet monetized in the way they are today, so I felt like that might have been not quite as true to the period. There were websites, but the internet was not nearly as ubiquitous as it was say even 5 years later. But the overall story was intriguing. Using money and drugs and sex and greed to control people is nothing new and sadly has not gone away despite some progress in who is in charge of what.
Fletcher was a really well developed character and I liked just about everything about him. He was a flawed and nuanced character who ultimately stood by his principles – sometimes to his own detriment. When he didn’t do that, he was miserable. Jackson was a very sympathetic and somewhat familiar character. How many times have we read about child actors who were swallowed up and spit out by the entertainment juggernaut. I’m sure we could all list at least a dozen right off the tops of our heads. Their families could not have been more different – polar opposites in fact. Jackson’s parents were interested in what their kid could do for them. It was sad to hear it in so many words. Fletcher’s family was supportive although not perfect – like most people’s family. The villains were very villainous and there were quite a few morally ambiguous characters here that played into the final solution. As in real life 😉 Recommended especially for those how like a complicated route to an interesting mystery with an urgent romance baked in.
RATING: 
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