Black Rainbow by J.J. McAvoy

Did Not Finish

 

 

Back Cover Blurb -
 

After an erotic one-week fling with a musician she meets in a bar, Thea Cunning never expects to see Levi Black again. Then Monday morning comes around, and she discovers that her former lover is not only her professor, but he’s also one of the top criminal lawyers in the state of Massachusetts.

With everyone in class vying to be one of the twelve disciples—a group of twelve students that Professor Black takes under his wing—tensions run high. Thea considers dropping his class, given their passionate week together and their undeniable chemistry. After all, there are other (less infuriatingly sexy) law professors on campus.

But to accomplish her goal and get her father out of prison, Thea knows she needs to learn under the best of the best—and that’s Levi Black. 

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I’m going to start off on a tangent with this one, just bear with me.  I often times clump Doctors and Lawyers in the same category.  Obviously the job titles and descriptions are different, but the schooling and notoriety within each group seems to be the same.  Both have a grueling amount of schooling that has to be achieved in order to become one and both sides need to have a certain amount of passion to achieve those goals and both are small knit communities, meaning – if you are a superstar doctor or lawyer, then the chances are pretty high that other doctors or lawyers know you or know of you and your family, either from case studies or research.  Therein lies one of my major problems with this story.

Based off the blurb from the back of this book, we know that the story is roughly going to be about girl meets boy, girl and boy spend a full week together hooking up and then we find out that boy is girls college professor.  Yes, there are more details, but let me explain to you why this is something I can’t get past.

We are introduced to our male MC, Levi Black, who we are told is a tough as nails law professor, he is known as “El Diablo” to his law students and “The Cleaner” to the rest of the law community.  He hasn’t lost a case in over 6 years and being chosen as one of his “twelve disciples” is something that all law students compete at a chance of becoming.  It is a coveted spot within his own law firm, one of the best in the country and only the best of the best are chosen to be a part of it.  Sounds pretty rigorous right?  Seems to me any law student that is about to take his class would have studied up on this and know what they are about to get themselves into or who at least is teaching the class, you would think anyways.

Now enter our female MC, Thea Cunning.  Thea is a law student, whose own mother is a legendary lawyer, known all throughout the criminal law community as the “The Shark”.  Having lost only 3 cases in her 25 year career, her cases are studied and discussed in law classes all over the country.  –Okay, I’m going to go ahead and stop right here and point out my main problem with all of this, if you haven’t figured it out already.  So, you are trying to tell me that Thea and Levi have spent a WHOLE week together having passionate, mad monkey-sex all over the place, both of them knowing each other’s name and they had NOT A CLUE who each other was??? Really???  So Thea never once looked to see who her law professor was going to be? She just happened to enroll in one of the most intense law classes available, with one of the most famous lawyers country wide and she never once thought to look up the details on who would be teaching that class?  Being a student of law, she has never once heard the name or studied a case of one of the most supposed famous lawyers in the country?  Now, that brings me to our dear professor, Mr. Black.  He is going to be the professor of the daughter of one of the most famous lawyers of her time, whose cases he studies in his class and he isn’t at least given a heads up by the college? In his studies and research of Margaret “The Shark” Cunning, the name of her family or daughter specifically never came up?  He’s a top lawyer and Harvard grad and he doesn’t even look at his class roster once before class starts?  I could understand if they gave each other bogus names or if they just happened to have a fantastic one-night stand, but to spend a whole freaking week with each other and the topic of profession NEVER once came up? 

 

I understand that this is fiction and I was even able to overlook the fact that Mr. Black also moonlights as a part-time rock star *eye roll*, but COME ON!  How much ‘I call bullshit’ am I expected to swallow before things go from “yeah right” to down right “ridiculous.”  I know that lawyers don’t have the best reputations, but one thing I KNOW that they are known for is their ability to get information and that they are sticklers for details and I’m supposed to believe that neither one of them was curious enough to ask each other the most famous get to know you question, “So, what do you do?”  Nope, not buying it.  I’m supposed to believe that within an hour of meeting each other at a club, they go to play hide-the-salami with each other, decide to make it a week long hide-the-salami session and neither one of them once recognized each other’s name? Nope, nope, nope, sorry, I’m not buying that either. 

 

So here it is, that issue coupled with my dislike for the often times juvenile character dialogue, caused this one to become a DNF for me.  It’s possible that some of this is later sorted out in the book and the book gets better, but within the first 25% of it, I was already gritting my teeth and eye rolling myself into a headache, so rather than prolong the torture, I just stopped reading.   I do see that some people really loved this book though, so this obviously comes down to personal, pet-peevish tastes and this one hit a nerve with me. 

To be fair though, I am not going to rate this one because I stopped reading so early on in the book, but it’s not one that will make my recommended list.  If you decide to read it, I hope you have a better experience than I did.

Happy reading, until next time…

I would like to thank NetGalley and NYLA for the ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.