Review: Hotshot by Julie Garwood

Peyton Lockhart and her sisters have inherited Bishop’s Cove, a small, luxurious oceanfront resort, but it comes with a condition: The girls must run the resort for one year and show a profit—only then will they own it.

A graduate of a prestigious French culinary school, Peyton has just lost her job as a food critic. Out of work and in a bad place personally, a year doing something completely different sounds wonderful.

There are countless challenges and too many people who want to stop the sisters from succeeding. Among them are Peyton’s contentious cousins, who are outraged that they didn’t inherit the resort, as well as a powerful group of land developers who have been eyeing the coveted beachfront property.

It’s soon apparent to Peyton that their efforts are being sabotaged, but she refuses to let the threats scare her—until she’s nearly killed. She calls on her childhood friend and protector, Finn MacBain, now with the FBI, and asks for his help. He saved her life once; he can do it again.
Julie’s previous two titles, The Ideal Man and Sweet Talk, both debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list.

This is another of Garwood’s contemporaries and I have to say, I really enjoyed it!

Peyton Lockhart has just taken a job at a culinary magazine as a food critic, only once she moves up there she realizes that her job is more be at her boss’ beck and call, and less actual food critiquing. She makes a couple new friends, but on the whole no one is very pleasant, and her new boss soon becomes a problem. Drew Albertson’s been sexually harassing the women in the office for years and no one has stopped him. When it becomes clear that Human Resources isn’t going to help, Peyton realizes she’ll have to take matters into her own hands.

She records her boss making sexual advances and gets the heck out of dodge. Unfortunately, Drew finds out and sends out his goons to make sure Peyton doesn’t make it home.

She does make it home, only to meet up with her former childhood neighbor Finn MacBain, who not only falls for her, but sees the bullet holes in her car. Finn is furious that Peyton isn’t taking the threat against her life seriously, and I have to say that becomes a recurring them in this book. In fact that’s probably what kept it from being a 5 star book for me.  Peyton is shot at several times, almost killed, a bomb is blown up near her and she never once acts like “Oh crap, well, my life’s in danger.” She seriously acts like it’s not a big deal.

Finn is an FBI agent now, a far cry from the boy who taught her to swim as a child. And it seems he still wants to keep her safe. When she is offered a chance to run her uncle’s resort for a year (with her 2 sisters), she takes it. If they can show profit, they can keep the resort. Unfortunately Peyton’s troubles follow her to Florida, and so do a whole host of new problems. But luckily Finn follows her there too.

The only things that annoyed me were Peyton constantly ignoring the actual danger and Finn would quite often use his status as FBI Agent to break up bar brawls, stop snipers from rooftops, and all around play super hero. It was sexy and he has a badge, but it was overkill.

On the whole, I enjoyed this story,  and I think any Garwood fan will too.

***ARC courtesy of Dutton/Penguin Group via Netgalley