Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Love’s Lawyer

SERIES:  The Fearless Heart

AUTHOR:  Janice Jarrell

NARRATOR:  Walker Williams

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH:  8 hours and 42 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  March 4, 2021

BLURB:

Colin Campbell had been a champion all his life. Nothing had ever beaten him, not even a drug lord’s bullet. And he approached law school the same way he approached everything in life, with cocky confidence fizzing through his veins like ginger ale. He had it all. He had the looks, the brains, the experience, the know-how and he also had the love of his life at his side. He couldn’t be defeated.

But he hadn’t counted on the gravitas of law school, the reading, the preparation, the cases, the competition, the Socratic Method, the concepts, the grading curve, the expectations, the finals, memos, study groups, outlines…all of it piled and heaped upon those preparing for a career as an attorney until it wasn’t surprising that some of them simply imploded under the weight of it all.

Suddenly Colin was spinning out of control, scrambling to keep up, rarely ever seeing Joshua. His grades slumped as he tried desperately to balance the opposing forces in his life, but his only solution was stretching himself thinner and thinner, until he feared he’d be torn in two. Joshua pleaded with him to slow down, but Colin refused to lighten his load and the path before them grew darker and darker.

They’d been through so much and survived. Would law school be the storm they could not weather? Would it do what a drug lord’s bullet could not – hand Colin Campbell the bitter defeat he never believed he’d have to face?

Or would the man he loved find a way to draw him back from the abyss.

REVIEW:

NOTE:  This is the first book in what appears to be a second arc for this established couple.  I was told I could start here and it would be fine.  I think it would have been much better for me to have read/listened to the long backstory of this married couple before embarking on this story because it’s obvious they have a pretty fraught history before their HEA and that affects the current storyline.

Joshua is a clinical psychologist who is married to Colin, a retiring UVA police office who is now attending law school.  The focus of this story is how these two men deal with their marriage and the many outside pressures that come with daily life and especially around the pressures that Colin is dealing with as a law student.  This is a totally different life from what he experienced as a highly decorated officer newly retired from the force.

All starts off well enough with Colin’s retirement.  There is a nice party with appropriate recognition and send off.  Then they take a trip to Ireland to see Colin’s family and have some stress free time together before the semester starts.  Joshua surprises Colin with a wonderful retirement present that sets him up well as he starts his new student journey.

Somehow Joshua seems to be an L2 – because he’s been a police officer??  I don’t think that’s actually possible.  (Full disclosure:  I work at an AmLaw 100 law firm).  Anyway, he’s set himself up with a very heavy class load – with electives that probably are ill-advised.  But Colin believes that he is super human and can handle anything.  He’s always come out on top and his LSAT’s also probably convince him that he can handle more than the “average” law student.

Things start off pretty well, but then he joins a study group.  He doesn’t really like some of the people in the group, but they seem competent and are proving helpful outlines, etc.   There is one member of the group though that is constantly behind.  She begins to cause a lot of problems because she always looks to Colin to bail her out when she’s having trouble.  Instead of referring her to Student Services, which is apparently run by his best friend, he continues to spend time he doesn’t really have essentially tutoring her.  This begins to seriously cut into any time he might have with Joshua.

As the semester churns on, Colin becomes short-tempered.  He doesn’t get sleep because he’s studying day and night, helping his study group partner and essentially taking on way too much.  Joshua is concerned, but whenever he expressed this concern, Colin tells him he’ll take care of it and he’ll make sure that he does what is necessary.  He constantly breaks promises to Joshua.  Josh keeps quiet for the most part, but when he does express frustration, Colin takes out his anger at himself on Josh.  Things go from bad to worse when he agrees to take on yet another project when he can’t even manage his current workload.

After an extreme outburst with Josh, Colin finally decides he needs to do something about what is happening.  It takes him some time, but he eventually gets things somewhat under control.  David, his best friend, gives him feedback he doesn’t want to hear, but he knows that David only has his best interests in mind.   He also knows Colin really well and he knows that Colin cannot just admit that he needs help.  But if he wants to save his marriage and succeed at Law School, he will have to make some significant changes.

I’m giving this a conditional recommendation.  I felt like a lot of things could have been tightened up with the pacing and that Colin’s inability to see the forest for the trees got tedious.  I wanted to shake both of these guys – Joshua because he let Colin walk all over him and Colin because of his god/savior complex.  Since Josh is a therapist, I would have thought he would have pushed Colin to see a therapist a lot sooner.  It seems that they made use of therapy after Colin’s injury that occurred in the previous story arc.  Colin neglect his mental and physical health to the point of breakdown.  I would have thought his friends would have been vocal sooner.  The writing is good and I did believe the love story between these two.  I’ll be interested to see what happens in the next book.

The narrator of this series is good.  He is new to me and I liked his voice characterizations.  There are a lot of characters, but I wasn’t confused as to who was speaking at any time.  There are some overwrought moments, but I thought the performance was spot on for what these guys were going through.  Recommended and I think the narration took the story up a notch for me.

RATING: 

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