Book Review: Winning Bid

Title: Winning Bid
Author: Charlotte Byrd
Genre: Romance, Fiction

What It’s About: June and Anderson are stressed out about Neil’s body resurfacing, and what that may mean for them. They both realize that someone could provide a tip that Neil was seen with June at the bar one night, which would bring the detectives to her door. Sure enough, the detectives visit June at her office, where she lies and tells them that she flirts with many dudes at the bar as part of her job, and that it really freaked her out that Neil was saying negative things about women. She then proceeds to cry at her office, before she heads out to meet with her father, Mitch, for lunch. June comes home and asks for Anderson to go for a walk, then tells him that the apartment may be bugged, so they shouldn’t talk about the whole Neil situation inside the house. Anderson decides to take them to the Ritz Carlton, which is known for their secrecy and for sweeping of bugs, under the guise of making it up to June after an argument and going out with her. They spend the night at the Ritz Carlton, but June does have to do a presentation for Andre Moeller about the businesses that he wants to take over. So she prepares that while they snuggle in bed, and then they have sex.

June goes into her office and owns the presentation. Afterwards, Andre gives her the keycard and tells her that she should go into his office and get a picture on his desk for him, which results her finding a folder on Elliott West. In that folder, she finds out that all of the companies she has been researching for Andre are all tied to Elliott West. Anderson also meets with Moss, at a Pizzeria, where they talk about the body and Moss says that he doesn’t know what happened because he punctured the lungs and the guts. They go separate ways. Anderson eventually meets with his dad in his office, who tells him to sit with Otto Pym, who is one of the best lawyers when it comes to murder trials. Elliott tells him that he doesn’t want to know why he killed Neil, but he needs to talk to Otto Pym. So Anderson goes to meet with Otto Pym, and they have a conversation about his involvement in the death of Neil. Otto tells him that he should speak with the detectives, and they meet with the detectives in the interrogation room. The detectives push Anderson a bit in their line of questioning, and they make it sound like they have something on him, though afterwards Pym tells him that they would have arrested him had they had any type of information on him and that one of the Detectives is known for doing anything and everything beyond the letter of the law to get a confession, which has a lot of people against him, so Anderson should use that against the detective. Pym also tells him that he will do whatever it takes to save Anderson, as he is Elliott’s lawyer, and that they will throw June under the bus. Anderson says no, and tells him to make sure of the fact that June doesn’t go to jail for this, while saving him.

June and Anderson head way to Vermont to take a break and have a weekend getaway. During their visit in Vermont, Moss shows up and tells him that his sources inside the BPD tell him that they’ve overheard the detective say that they have a video of Anderson killing Neil. Neither June nor Anderson can think of a place that could have caught everything on video. Anderson calls Otto several times, but he is not picking up at all, so Anderson goes upstairs to his father to talk about getting in touch with Otto. When he arrives at his father’s office, he overhears Otto and Elliott talking, during which Otto tells Elliott that he will make June take the fall for Neils’ death. Anderson walks in on them, and reminds Otto that he will not tolerate June being thrown under the bus. Elliott tells Otto to leave, and Anderson tells his father that he will marry June, and that this isn’t appropriate, to which Elliott responds that June is a spy. He tells Anderson that she must have started her undercover work during the charity event, to get close to the family, and shows Anderson evidence that she is scanning documents for entities that Elliott overseas. Elliott tells Anderson to end this relationship with June.

Anderson is in disbelief, but has June meet him at the Mansion where they met during the Charity organization. They have an argument, during which June tells him that she didn’t know about Elliott’s tie to the businesses that Andre wants to buy until after, and she is so unbelievably angry that Anderson believes her. They make a plan to enter her office building, break into Andre’s office and steal documents that prove her innocence—and they carry it out—along with having steamy sex in the utility closet.

The next day, they visit Ms. Dana Horowitz, a friend of Anderson’s mom, Kitty. She had fallen out with Kitty because Kitty had thought that she was trying to have an affair with Elliott, when in reality Ms. Horowitz had saved Elliott from drowning in the pool. They visit her, tell her everything about Andre and show her the documents that they scanned from Andre’s files. She tells them that they need to threaten Andre with mutually assured destruction, showing them her own files on Andre. Anderson visits Andre, threatens him with the information, and Andre agrees to sign the agreement that he will not come after them for the breaking and entering, as well as for Elliott’s companies. Then, June and Anderson go visit Elliott, and lay down the facts in front of him about what had happened. Anderson tells Elliott that he will stay with June no matter what so he either gets on board or not; it’s up to him.

Throughout all of this June had lunch with her dad, but while she was in Vermont, her father took it upon himself to email an introduction to Andre from June’s own email—email fraud—and he met with Andre the day June returned to the office. She gets mad at him, asking him what kind of scam he’s trying to run now, and then tells him that if he goes through with this relationship, then she will have nothing to do with him. Mitch leaves, but later, after Anderson threatens Andre, June has him visit her apartment and they talk, at which point he reveals what exactly he is doing—he is in advertising, but what his team of people have done is created higher advertisements clicks online for companies, so they will be getting a cut of the money made per advertisement on the website through bots.

Eventually, June and Anderson decide to elope—both wanting to avoid the big pomp and circumstance of weddings—and they do it in the Courthouse in Boston at 4pm. Then, they go to a restaurant, one that is really hard to get seats at but it just so happens that Anderson knows the owner, and they were able to get him a seat. While they are there, celebrating the start of their married life, Kitty and Elliott show up to dine and see them, so they join the newlyweds at the table. Anderson reveals that they have gotten married, and conversation goes fairly okay with his parents, though at the end, Kitty does get June’s agreement to throw a reception for the newlyweds.

Anderson and June arrive at Anderson’s home for the reception, and June even sees her father there. Things are going well—Cole, Elliott, Kitty and Anderson make speeches. Anderson sees that his mom will put June on the spot, and she’s not great with public speaking, so he tells the musicians to start the music for the first dance. While they are having their first dance, the two detectives show up and arrest Anderson for the murder of Neil. Cole takes care of June and another day he asks her if there is anyone he could call for her that is a friend. June calls Callie, and tells her everything, to which Callie tells her that things can get worse, and adds that she has gotten engage. At the bail meeting, Dana dismisses the reading of the charges, and meets with the judge along with the prosecutor. They set bail at 1 million USD, and Anderson is free to go with June to their apartment. The prosecutor is also looking for re-election so he wants to use this case to run his campaign on.

The trial starts, and the prosecutor brings all sorts of witnesses to the stand including an elderly neighbor of Neil’s that Dana disproves is unable to confirm that June was at Neil’s building because she has really bad eyesight, June, and Neil’s boss (who gets dismissed from the witness stand when Dana points out that he didn’t even oversee Neil at all). Ultimately, the prosecutor brings in Moss as a witness, and Moss basically explains everything that was done—but he does not label it as murder, because it was accidental as June had bruises on her neck—and when asked why he is testifying, he tells them that he got immunity after videos were found of his van and carrying the body, because he does not want to go to jail ever again. Anderson is heartbroken, but June is angry because he had not been loyal to them. Anderson tells her that he doesn’t want anything to happen to Moss’s family at all, and will not do anything to make Moss look bad. Dana tells him to avoid being truthful in the questions beyond what Moss had already revealed, but while Anderson is on the stand the next day, he realizes that he wants justice; this is what his family had gone into law for, and that is what he wants. So he tells them the truth—that he had seen June come out of the bar with Neil and followed them because he wanted to talk to her, only to see her being choked and nearly raped. The prosecutor tries to twist his words into one of a jealous lover, but he explains that they were no longer together at the time so it doesn’t make sense, though he wanted to get back with her. The trial ends, and the jury deliberates. It takes so long that they go home and June is upset with him because he just revealed the truth and that she perjured herself for him. He tells her that it does not matter, because the prosecutor is doing this to win an election, and he won’t be able to come after her until after the re-election is done, so they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. By this point, they have already talked about starting a family, and June is eager to get it going.

The trial ends with a mistrial, as the Jury had been split in the decision too evenly and so they had no consensus on whether Anderson is guilty or not. The judge tells him that it may be that he is brought to trial again, but for now he has no choice but to declare the mistrial. June and Anderson’s family celebrate, and Elliott invites them to go out, but Anderson asks to just spend time with June. So they go home and have sexy time together to get started on that family they both want.

My Thoughts: Uyyy, this is not a great story—there were a few errors in spelling (Neal instead of Neil at one point only) and one chapter was not formatted correctly. Overall the story was very mediocre, and it seems to have glossed over a lot of things, jumping forward into the future at some point (though I’m still very unclear on whether that did happen or I just assumed it based on the language) and a lot of things seem a little too convenient. How is it that Dana’s sources couldn’t find the video, but apparently Moss was turned, so there has to be some video? Why didn’t Anderson outwit the detective and get him booted from the force, since it seems like quite a few people don’t like that detective? Anderson goes to Andre, and has him sign a mutually assured destruction contract, and that’s that? The guy just rolls over, but he’s the criminal mastermind of the underworld with connections overseas?

There are some steamy sex scenes and the romance is nice, but it’s not gripping. Outside of that, it doesn’t have much substance. I am also a bit disappointed by the fact that the book had no Epilogue, and it feels like it was left unfinished—did Anderson have to face trial again after this trial was declared a mistrial, or not? Did he become a senator? did he clean up his father’s business? It feels unfinished, almost as if the author has left the door open for a potential fourth book in the series or a continuation of the series in some way though there hasn’t been one announced, and quite frankly I don’t know if I would want to read yet another novel from this series or even this author.