WhiskeyintheJar Romance

“Eating in the library?” He made a deep tsking sound. “Shame on you, Penelope Blue. You’re lucky I don’t turn you in to the authorities.”

I relaxed ever so slightly. He wasn’t arresting me. He was flirting with me. “You can’t prove a thing,” I said quickly. “I swallowed the evidence.”

His eyes deepened in color until they were almost black. “Now that’s something I like to hear."

The daughter of the Blue Fox could do nothing but grow up to be a jewel thief. Penelope hasn't seen her father in years or his supposed hundred million nest egg, with a cobbled together group of friends, she makes her living stealing jewels. What starts off as part of bet with her bestfriend Riker, she gets close to a FBI agent who seems to be watching them.

Written in first person and all from Penelope's point of view, I personally missed our FBI agent Grant's thoughts. I can see why the author chose this as it intensifies their cat and mouse game of how much does Grant know about Penelope and is he using her? The author gives a couple emotional hints here and there to give the reader a pretty good idea where Grant's head and heart is at but Penelope is always second guessing. 

I flew through this as the writing and story was pretty addictive. However, the flashbacks were laid out in a way that gave the pace a bit of a stop and go feeling, ramping up the pace in the present tense only to halt it with going back in the past to see how Penelope and Grant got together. It felt like the author was purposefully doing this but it ended up making the pace feel very uneven to me. 

The series looks to be focused on Penelope, so even though there is no cliffhanger here, her story will continue on. Her group of friends deserve their own series or books as the author did a great job giving us enough of them to support the story and Penelope's character without clogging and enticing us to know more. 

This felt a little more madcap chik-lit than strictly romance and, like I said, not having Grant's pov killed a little of their relationship depth for me, but I couldn't tear myself away from reading the adventure.