“Some of us are born into a storm and some of us are born to chase after it.”

I really enjoyed where Jay went with Avett’s story. We’ve seen bits and pieces of her before, and none of it was really good. She’s a trouble maker, and she knows it, but she has a hard time stopping. But when she makes an EPIC mistake and lands herself in jail, she realizes that she needs to make a change before something really bad happens to those she loves.

Enter Quaid Jackson. He’s been called in to be this little pink haired spitfire’s lawyer and he has no idea what he’s in for. At first, all he sees is the crazy hair and sassy mouth, but the more he talks to her, the more he realizes that she’s totally different from his first impression. She doesn’t want to put anyone out. She takes full blame for her past and wants to do anything she can to clear her name.

The chemistry between Quaid and Avett was undeniable. They say opposites attract and, if you look at the surface, these two totally did.

That girl…there was just something about her. She made you want to help her, to heal her, to protect her, even as she blindly chased after the very things that would hurt her, the things that would leave wounds on her body, mind, and soul.

Quaid is this super flashy lawyer, but if you look deep enough there’s a lot more to him. I think that’s why he was drawn to Avett. She’s this little pixie of a girl, who doesn’t care about all his flashy things. But at the same time, she thinks that they won’t work, due to the very different worlds they come from. I wanted to smack both of them, at some point. It’s not about what you have on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that matters. They needed to work on that.

I really liked Avett. She’s young and stupid, but she’s real. She makes mistakes and owns them. I like that Quaid takes her for her. The road isn’t smooth for these two but no one ever life was easy.

This book had a few heart stopping moments and quite a few swoon worthy ones as well. Very swoon worthy. I completely enjoyed this book. There’s also a few side characters I wouldn’t mind seeing books about either. In fact, I may be willing to beg for them.

In conclusion, I just gotta say this, pink haired girls are cool. I may be partial, but it’s true.

~Melpomene

Buy Charged

Read an excerpt here:

Quaid
I tapped the edge of my thumb on the black-and-white mug shot photo and couldn’t stop the grin from tugging at my mouth.
She tried to fire me.
She was five-foot-nothing, a lifetime younger than me, had multicolored hair that had seen better days, wild eyes that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be green, gold, or brown, while dressed in convict orange and obviously scared out of her ever loving mind, yet she still tried to fire me. If it had been any of my other clients—the cop accused of sexual battery, the frat boy accused of manslaughter over a bet on a football game gone wrong, the middle school teacher accused of pedophilia and having an inappropriate relationship with several of her students, or the pro football player accused of domestic abuse—I would have tipped my proverbial hat, wished them luck while I cut my losses, and walked away without a backward glance. People always committed crimes. People always needed a good defense, so it wasn’t like I was hurting for clients, but there was something about the girl. Something about the defiant tilt of her chin and the raw desperation in her tone when she begged me not to call her father.
“I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything from you.” She sounded like she meant it when she said it, but I figured she was too young and too scared to know exactly what she wanted or needed. Regardless, it was still refreshing to hear.
Everyone always wanted something from me and my help was usually the least of it.
I tapped the picture again, wondering why I found it so easy to believe that she really hadn’t been a part of the boyfriend’s plan to rob the bar. She wasn’t anyone’s idea of a model citizen and she had the shady track record to prove it. She was too young, and frankly too adorable, to have a file this thick. From what I could see, she had a set of parents always willing to ride to the rescue when she got herself into trouble. She looked like some kind of colorful woodland fairy from a Disney movie with her odd hair and delicate features. None of it added up, but the sincerity in her tone when she said she would never have gone with the boyfriend if she knew his intent and the fear in her eyes when I mentioned her father seemed genuine.
I learned long ago to treat everyone like they were guilty of whatever it was I was paid to defend them against. I didn’t want to know the truth. I didn’t want to know the circumstances. I wanted my clients to listen to me and let me do my job as I tried to convince the rest of the world they were innocent, regardless if they were or not. But this girl with her faded, rose colored hair and turbulent eyes oozed innocence through the cracks of a very guilty façade.
Because I was intrigued and actually believed the girl might be innocent, I wasn’t going to let her fire me. I was going to call her father and hope that he would help me keep her out of the slammer while I figured out how to plea bargain her charges down or get them dismissed altogether. Again, because a cop was involved in the robbery and because the boyfriend, junkie or not, was offering up a pretty plausible explanation for Avett’s involvement in the crime, nothing was a slam dunk, yet. I was going to help her whether she wanted me to or not.