The Perfect Alibi by Phillip Margolin
Series: Robin Lockwood #2
Published by Minotaur Books on March 5, 2019
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
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I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A young woman accuses a prominent local college athlete of rape. Convicted with the help of undisputable DNA evidence, the athlete swears his innocence and threatens both his lawyer and his accuser as he's sent to prison. Not long after, there's another rape and the DNA test shows that the same person committed both rapes—which is seemingly impossible since the man convicted of the first rape was in prison at the time of the second one. Now, the convicted athlete, joined by a new lawyer, is granted a new trial and bail. Shortly thereafter, his original lawyer disappears and his law partner is murdered.
Robin Lockwood is a young lawyer with a prestigious small law firm and a former MMA fighter who helped pay for Yale Law School with her bouts. She is representing the victim of the first rape for her civil lawsuit against her rapist, who is now convinced the rapist is stalking her and trying to intimidate her. At the same time, another client is up on a murder charge—one that should be dismissed as self-defense—but the D.A. trying the case is determined to bring it to trial. Now she has to mastermind two impossible cases, trying to find the hidden truth that links the two of them.

A woman brings her daughter to Robin Lockwood, accusing a college football star of raping her. With the help of DNA evidence, he is easily convicted on rape charges. But then another woman shows up, claiming she was raped and the DNA is pointing to a man already in prison. Meanwhile, someone is killing attorneys, could their murder’s be connected?

This, for me, was a fast-paced read. I found myself invested in the first case enough to be flipping through the pages in order to see how everything was going to play out. I kind of figured things out halfway through, but I still wanted to see where it was going to go. The rape case in this book is a bit of a sensitive subject and I am not at all sure if the story itself was plausible, but I do feel like it could be somewhat realistic. In which case, I don’t know how to feel about it and honestly wasn’t sure if I liked where it went in the end.

The murders kept me guessing, but in the end, I found the reasons and the outcome to be a bit far fetched.

There was nothing wrong with the lining. The story was fine. The characters were fine. The subplots that happened in this book outside of these two cases, felt irrelevant to the story and more like a filler.

Even If the Sky Falls by Mia Garcia
Series: Standalone
Published by Katherine Tegen Books on May 10, 2016
Genres: Young Adult, Romance
Pages: 304
Format: Kindle Edition
Source: Publisher
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I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

All she needs is one night to be anyone she wants.
Julie is desperate for a change. So she heads to New Orleans with her youth group to rebuild houses and pretend her life isn’t a total mess. But between her super-clingy team leader and her way-too-chipper companions, Julie feels more trapped than ever.
In a moment of daring, she ditches her work clothes for DIY fairy wings and heads straight into the heart of Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, where she locks eyes with Miles, an utterly irresistible guy with a complicated story of his own. And for once, Julie isn’t looking back. She jumps at the chance to see the real New Orleans, and in one surreal night, they dance under the stars, share their most shameful secrets, and fall in love.
But their adventure takes an unexpected turn when an oncoming hurricane changes course. As the storm gains power and Julie is pulled back into chaos she finds pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.
Mia García’s Even If the Sky Falls is a whirlwind twenty-four-hour romance about discovering what it means to feel alive in the face of life’s greatest danger: love.

Let me start out on the positive note of this book. The author’s writing is absolutely beautiful, Mia Garcia as a writer really has her way with words and can create lively and vivid settings. I loved the setting of New Orleans as a backdrop for this book.

That being said, the rest fell a little flat for me.

I didn’t like Julie. I found her “problem” to be superficial and a bit self-centered. In all of this she never really stopped to consider that her brother was the one that has these problems and took it upon herself to try and force something that even therapists have a hard time fixing. When that did not work out in her favor she almost does something completely stupid and selfish. I hated her character, I found her annoying.

This is one of those books that instant love and takes place in one day where Julie and ‘Miles’ give each other fake names and kind of just get lost in the day. I just found that I could not connect with the characters.

The last 20% of the book thought really well written, was a bit odd. A hurricane hits and the two characters decide to be careless, despite Mile’s living in New Orleans during Katrina some of his actions really made me question his intelligence and of course because of his recklessness Julie gets hurt.

Another thing happens with a doctor at the hospital that was completely unbelievable and the storyline between Julie and Tavis one of the boys that feels irrelevant to the story was super odd and unnecessary.

Thought the writing was beautiful, the story did complete lack of depth and meaning.