This is Lana Ferguson’s best book yet! It dives right into a steamy opening scene between Dani and Ezra who are rival lawyers with benefits. This is a spicy read with excellent banter, in and out of the courtroom, and I loved it. 

Danica (Dani) works hard at her job as one of the top divorce attorneys in Austin, Texas. Her boss has just offered her the lead role on a big divorce case representing the wife of a real estate tycoon. He tells her, if she wins, he will make her a junior partner in the firm. This is something she wants badly. Everything’s great until… she finds out her opposing counsel will be none other than Ezra Hart, a worthy rival and the man she has been having a no strings affair with!

Ezra is charming and successful and works for his family’s high powered law firm. We see right away that he is smitten with Dani. She’s beautiful plus he admires how she goes toe to toe with him in and out of the courtroom. She can be prickly with him and pretends she doesn’t want him, but of course she really does – he’s handsome and brilliant. But she has emotional scars from watching her parents’ divorce and then enduring a bad break up when she was in college. Now she’s afraid to fall in love and thinks love only ends in hurt. She is drawn to Ezra but tells herself she isn’t interested in dating or marriage and instead, focuses on her work. She and Ezra have a grumpy sunshine thing going where she is the grump and he is the sunshine and this adds to the fun.

We barely get a glimpse of how their affair started and I would have liked to have seen more on that but it’s clear they can’t keep their hands off each other. I laughed at their snarky banter which turned sweet as they grew closer. They both have family trauma. Ezra has an especially messy family situation. He works for his father, who is a cruel monster. Additionally, he’s been trying to figure out a way to protect his mother from his terrible father. (She has some mental health issues and is fragile.) The novel becomes very emotional as Dani and Ezra helped each other deal with their challenges.

I didn’t always understand the details of the courtroom drama but it was still suspenseful and I couldn’t wait to see who would win – I couldn’t guess until the end because there were some surprising twists in the story. Dani has some associates that help her with investigations and they add fun with their jokes and secondary romance.

This story has lots of emotional depth, teasing humor and spice and I think readers looking for a summer read for the beach or pool will enjoy this. I’ve read just about all of Ferguson’s books and this one is my favorite – it really shines!

There’s also a teaser chapter at the end for her next book, The Mating Game, coming later this year. It takes place in The Fake Mate universe, yay! I’m counting down the days for this one.