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Both books in W.S. Long's best-selling Love and Mystery series are now available together in one box set! Contains the stories:
Love and Murder -- Jake Chandler is a struggling small-town Florida lawyer, and his life is falling apart. His ex-wife makes seeing his daughter difficult, his boyfriend Noah may be cheating on him, and his money woes are growing. Jake hopes that a new murder defense case will help with his money woes, but his ex-wife Elena is the prosecutor. It’s bad enough she has to fight with him over custody of their daughter. Now she wants nothing more than to beat him in the courtroom, too.
And then people around him start dying.
First, an ex-lover gets his brains blown out while he and Jake have coffee. The danger comes even closer. Then Jake meets handsome FBI agent Xavier, who is investigating the crimes surrounding him. Can Jake trust this new man in his life? Is Xavier who he says he is? Or does his involvement put Jake and those he loves in even more danger?
Love and Pain -- After their too-thrilling courtship that included capturing his former lover's killer, Jake Chandler has started a new life for himself with FBI agent Xavier. Living together is wonderful, but moving to Washington D.C. has resulted in temporary jobs that don’t last long. When Jake finally lucks out on a too-good-to-be-true position with a big law firm, Xavier suspects Jake’s new boss is crooked.
With some sleuthing, snooping, and close calls, Jake gets deeper into trouble at work, and conflicts with Xavier make his world start to crumble. When a key witness is shot to death in front of Jake, they both begin to realize how high the stakes are. Can Jake and Xavier get through these threats and find happiness with each other?
Publisher: JMS Books, LLC
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 5
Romantic Content: 5
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Gay
Protagonist 1 Age: 26-35
Protagonist 2 Age: 26-35
Languages Available: English
Jia on Gay Book Reviews wrote:Before you sit down to read this box set, I am warning you, you need to make sure you have a box of tissues nearby. This book is going to break your heart in more ways than one and then it is going to slowly put it back together. I will admit while reading the first book in this box set that I found I was really upset with how WS Long played it out, but after reading book two, I got it!!
Jake is a struggling defense attorney. He is just scraping by trying to make ends meet. Not only that but he is behind on his alimony and child support payments and his boyfriend Noah, he cannot seem to stay faithful to Jake. No matter how many times Noah has promised it will not happen again, it still does.
Now that Jake has a new or like-new, client to defend, he is hoping things may be starting to look up for him. But then he finds out Noah has once again cheated. Of course Jake does not think he will be able to forgive him this time. Then to make matters worse, Jake runs into an ex named Anton and after agreeing to meet up, Anton is killed in front of him and Jake is injured.
The more Jake looks at everything around the death of Anton, the more he questions if the shooting was because of Anton or if it was because of Jake himself. When Jake thinks he has a lead on who may be behind the murder, he turns to Noah for advice.
Noah in turn decides Jake is in need of his help proving Jake’s theory. This sets off a series of events that will forever turn Jake’s life upside down. Things will never be the same for Jake.
This is all the detail that I am going to give where this series is concerned. But take my word for it, this is just the beginning and if you do not read this box set then you will definitely be missing out on an extremely good read. It is full of mystery, danger, loss, love, and so much more. W.S. Long did an amazing job on this for sure. I hope there will be more of Jake and his crazy life in the future.
Love and Murder
This is the first book about Jake Chandler and it took me by surprise a little. There are things that I so did not expect in this book. If cheating is something you dislike reading about you might want to think twice before reading this book. It’s only mentioned but it’s mentioned quite a lot in this first book. The story starts off with Jake leaving his daughter at his ex-wife’s home at midnight when they had decided at 8 pm. First when I started reading I did wonder if there actually was another book before this one, but no this is the first one about Jake. As I understood Jake has already been through the custody fight and he now has rights of access to his daughter and pays child support and alimony to his ex-wife, which he struggles with since his law firm isn’t doing so well.
I read somewhere this was the author’s first book, if it’s true I’m not sure. However I noticed a distinct improvement in the writing between the first and the second book of this box set.
The sex scenes need more editing and the names Jake used for certain intimate parts of the body made me cringe, it is first person narrative so it can work but I’d rather go without reading those.
The plot is good enough to be interesting. There were some things I thought odd, like law enforcement usually identify themselves as cops or FBI when they come upon a suspect and the way Jake was used had me wondering, since to me, it didn’t seem plausible. The reason for them to involve Jake felt weak.
This does have suspense and drama enough though so in that sense it wasn’t bad. Xavier came into the story later towards the ending more or so it felt, and the ending… well… I did question Xavier’s professionality.
Love and Pain
Jake’s past doesn’t want to let him go just yet and together with the too good to be true job he gets trouble is sure to follow, question is if he’ll survive it. Xavier has gotten himself a desk job at his promotion because of him not following procedures. When his boyfriend Jake’s being under scrutiny because of his newly acquired job Xavier has him agreeing to become a mole too see if the firm is actually doing something illegal. At the same time Jake tries to stay low to avoid repercussions of having been involved in the catching of the killer in his past.
The writing in this book is much better and it’s in third person instead of first as in the first book. It an interesting book however don’t expect the law enforcement to behave realistically and you’ll be fine. It was interesting to read though.
