Book Review: "The Rookie" by Julie Miller

The Rookie by Julie Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Back Cover: Suddenly something was more important to rookie officer Josh Taylor than busting a campus drug ring and making detective. Because when Josh's undercover investigation strangely intersected with his older and pregnant professor, Rachel Livesay, sparks of danger--and passion--ignited.

Rachel had no one to turn to until Josh vowed to protect her from the sperm donor who threatened to snatch her newborn child from her arms. But Josh was her "student," not a knight in shining armor--and falling for him could be deadly for them both!

“The Rookie” was the first of Julie Miller’s books that I read and it will always hold a special place on my bookshelf. It caused my obsession with the Taylor Clan and Precinct series as well as Ms. Miller's work in general.

Josh is a somewhat cocky 20-something who we get to watch mature as the storyline progresses. The kid brother of a clan of cops and firefighters, he feels he has a lot to prove but in reality it seems as if he’s already proven it. He just needs to learn he’s not a lone ranger in the deal.

On the other hand, Rachel is forced to work alone by life’s circumstances. Her ex-husband found more interest in other women than the wife he had at home. She didn’t have any family to lean on and now she’s pregnant by a sperm donor that wanted to lay claim to her unborn baby. She had nowhere to turn but the ever-chivalrous Josh felt it his duty to protect her.

The age difference between the two (she was 35 and he was 28) kept getting brought up but that didn’t bother me as much as the teacher-student aspect. Even though he was just pretending to be a student it could have caused a great deal of ethical trouble for her. While that was sort of addressed but sort of left open, it kind of left a question there, but since it’s not really relevant to the romance or the mystery/suspense resolution, I guess it doesn’t matter. Just me being nosy. LOL

Josh's brother Mac from "In the Blink of an Eye" (the 3rd book of the series) makes a cameo appearance in this book as does his brother Gideon, the arson investigator from book 5 in the series "Kansas City's Bravest". When I read this book the first time, I read it in before Mac's story so I didn't really care about the references to his returning to work but I liked the inclusion of the two brothers in this book. Wasn't too much to make you think "Who are these guys?" but enough to make you want to read their books.

I recently learned that Harlequin Intrigue has re-released these in Kindle format through Amazon. The Rookie’s link is here. I highly recommend the Taylor Clan series for anyone that likes romance with a touch of suspense. Julie Miller does it well.




View all my reviews