A review by summermusings
Jack of Hearts by Sandra Owens

3.0

I was torn between 3 stars and 4 stars on this one. Yes, it is the start of a new series and I usually grade up on the first book of a series because it has to provide backstory and all that so I was tempted to give it 4 stars. It is probably a 3.5 for me. It is a book club pick and sounded like something I would like. This book and the series premise reminded me a bit of Julie Ann Walker's Black Knights Inc series and Laura Kaye's Hard Ink series minus all the action of those series (both of which I LOVE). I liked this overall story and the end, while not a cliffhanger, made me interested enough to borrow the second book from the Kindle Lending Library. All of that said, the heroine annoyed the crap out of me several times - never a good sign. The biggest issue I had was her not telling her business partner about the loan she received. I also found it weird that her best friend didn't know about her cousin's behavior since it had been going on from the time she was a teen. I'm also confused by the best friend's boyfriend. Unless I missed something at the end (possible since I was also watching CSPAN at the same time - I know, I'm weird), the story ended with a simple he was spying for the uncle. That reasoning seemed off and a little too easy of an excuse. I was figuring he was spying for some other agency or something... and off to read book 2 because I called the sister angle early in book 1 and would like to see where that leads.