Overruled by Emma Chase

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After feeling a little bit "blah" after finishing Broken Fighter, I wanted another change of pace. Just trying to keep from getting slumpy here lately. I read through a couple blurbs on books I had on my tbr for the rest of the month and nothing was hitting my mood. I looked through my ideas for next month and Overruled by Emma Chase was what stuck out to me. This is the first book in her Legal Briefs series. This covers the defense attorney prompt for the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo and new author prompt for the Summer of Swoon board 2.

We start in high school when Stanton and his sweetheart Jenny find out that they're pregnant. Stanton proposes, but Jenny pushes for them to hold off so he can go to college and she can prepare for nursing school. He moves out of state and she stays home in Mississippi to raise their daughter with the help of both of their families. We cut to the future and Stanton is a criminal defense attorney in DC. They both had agreed to an open relationship when he went to college, and Stanton is currently in a friends with benefits relationship with his colleague Sofia. Stanton always believed that one day he'd get married to Jenny, but to his surprise received a wedding invitation for Jenny and someone else. It's days before the wedding and he convinces Sofia to go back to Mississippi to help him stop the wedding.

I was nervous going into this book because of the set-up and ended up really disappointed. Now before I get too much into what I disliked, I loved Emma Chase's writing. I've heard great things about her other series and have been wanting to read her for a while now. The fact that her writing was really engaging and there was great banter certainly kept me not only reading, but saved the rating so it was a 3-stars instead of 2. 

There were quite a few things I didn't like about the plot and set up of the story, but there are two that really bothered me the most so I'll focus on those. Stanton doesn't achieve closure or recognize his romantic relationship with Jenny is over until after 70% in. I did not like this at all and it ended up feeling rushed and I struggled to believe that Stanton was actually in love with Sofia in the end. He was cute with his daughter and did have some redeeming qualities, but he was blind to the situation longer than I wanted. As for the other main thing that bothered me, was Jenny and her decision to hide not only her relationship with the new guy, but her wedding. The reason why this bothered me so much was because they had a daughter together. I understand why she was nervous and kept putting off telling him she was dating seriously and then time got away from her. I understood that. What I did not like is in regards to their daughter. She was very mature for her age of 11, so that was nice and I loved how she would reprimand them when they acted younger than her. I did not like that Jenny hid the relationship and it came out that she had not only met the new guy, but was going to be living with him and her mother after the wedding. For Stanton to be completely left out of that decision and not notified really rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like Emma tried to make the reader not hate Jenny for the secrets and she was super nice to Sofia. But as a child of divorce and reading other single parent/divorcee romances, I feel like that was something that should've been addressed. I kept waiting for it to be brought up and become an issues, like I thought it should've been, but it never was. It just really bothered me and I still haven't forgiven Jenny and am still, a couple days later, heated over it. I don't care how nice she was to Sofia, she was wrong and it needed to be addressed. 

Okay, now I need to calm down. It just makes me so heated. It did take me 5 days to read this, although part of that is due to the start of the Olympics as well as my Aunt visiting for the weekend from California. I didn't dnf though, as mentioned above, because I did enjoy Emma's writing. The steam was also really well written. I'm excited to try more of her works and definitely want to read her Royally series. I might read the rest of this series. I've read the blurbs for the other books and it seems like the premise would be something I would enjoy more. We'll see how long it takes to get to those.

Have you read Overruled?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Overruled, Emma Chase, 3-stars, 5 days, eBook, 272 pages, published in 2015