I've read this story before but it was the online, Xena-uber fan fiction version. I was young in my lesfic reading career and pretty easily impressed. I liked this story pretty well back then. I read it a second time a few years ago and liked it less. I still liked the humor and some of the situations the characters found themselves in and the relationships between the main and the most prominent secondary characters were fun and felt genuine.

It was only a few months ago, I think, when the newest edition was released for sale on Amazon and I was happy when I was able to grab a copy on a free day. I felt much less lucky as I got into the book and discovered it is absolutely riddled with typos, missing words, and other problems that should have cleaned up before releasing it to the lesfic consumers. Setting aside all the standard old fan fic issues of head hopping, identifying characters by their eye or hair color or profession, not taking the time to run spell check or hire a proofreader before charging money for the book put me in a bad place while reading. If I had paid for it, I'd be really pissed and likely would have returned it for a refund. 

I already know that most of my friends would still rate this a 4 or 5 star book simply because they'd read it before when fan fic was still going strong in the Xenaverse, and I wouldn't rate the free online version with only two stars. But this is supposed to be a professionally produced product that readers are paying for. Judging the book in that way, two stars, in my opinion, is fair. 

Very ready for this one to be over. Did I already say that? In general, I enjoy these authors - particularly Blayne Cooper. While this is a lesfic favorite among many, many of my friends, I just am not enjoying it. But it's long and I'm too close to being done to not have it count toward my challenge numbers!

I probably wouldn't finish it if it were a new book to me. Lots of typos/missing words, head hopping, and other problems. But I like the humor and characters. Mostly. One of those old stories that I enjoyed during my old Xena fan fic days and have a soft spot for. A small soft spot.

If I hadn't gotten the Kindle ebook on a "free day" I'd be sort of pissed for paying for what appears to be the same quality of a book as I read online years ago. As it stands, I'm just sort of disappointed. 

I've read the online version a couple of times. A friend wanted to read it together now and I picked up the published version a couple months ago so this will be my first read of this version.

I was hesitant to read this book for several reasons... I saw all the great ratings and reviews and was immediately skeptical. I also read the author's first published book many years ago and didn't care for it much at all - again for several reasons. And lastly, I'm still not sure how I feel about published fan fic when it's so very obviously fan fic. I regularly debate this last one with myself and friends. It certainly makes me much more critical of the published version, at the very least.

With all that right out there, I enjoyed this book a lot. I have a soft spot for well done Rizzles fics (Rizzoli and Isles) and I thought the author did a great job of capturing the spirit of those characters. I'm also pretty sure that if I had no idea who the characters in this book were based off of, I'd still have had a very enjoyable experience - maybe even moreso. I don't think I would have really gotten why Nora was so out of touch with popular culture - unless I missed that in the book, which is possible I suppose.

I thought the protagonists had a good deal of depth - which doesn't seem to happen as often as it should in published fan fic - and the secondary characters weren't flat either. The dialogue was good and flowed well and the story arcs were interesting. I liked pretty much the whole damn thing. I wish it had been different enough from the show that I would have been able to not see Jane and Maura and everyone else in the characters but it was a good, fun read. I enjoyed the author's voice which seemed so much different from her first book.

I'm glad I finally caved to peer pressure and read Blurred Lines and I honestly look forward to reading the next in the series.