In JAKE: A SOUTHERN CRIME FAMILY NOVEL, Jake Whitfield is finally free of his abusive, tyrannical father, as he and his brothers watch the casket lower into the hole in the ground. Good riddance, says them all, but aside from their father, they will face others who want to take away everything they now have. When someone takes a potshot at them as they leave the cemetery, things get very interesting.
Angel Tally, a part of the feuding Tally family, and her brother are taken down and she blurts out that she and Jake have to get married. When the laughter finally dies down and she explains that his father and her grandfather, before they died in the fateful fire, they had a couple of codicils written into their wills. No marriage, no inheritance. The brothers are stunned but Jake the most. He and Angel might have a history but it's never been lovey-dovey. How could he guess that the antagonism that the two had felt for each other for so long, could morph into something neither expects? How could the two possibly fall in love? They are enemies.
JAKE: A SOUTHERN CRIME FAMILY NOVEL is the first time I have read anything by Carla Swafford and I will certainly be looking for more. You could actually feel the emotions that were emanating off of Jake as well as Angel throughout this well written story line. Having been raised by her grandfather, who didn't seem to be a whole lot better at parenting than Jake's father, Angel was well equipped to be a collector for him, but not too good with relationships. Though you could see that she loved her brother and really wanted to keep him out of the life. Jake was somewhat of an mystery, to the world he was the head of a crime family but in private he was just a man who wanted to be better and make sure things improve for everyone. But being the typical macho man toward at a point in the book, he does a "jerk" thing and she leaves him, but that is temporary because by the time he cools down he realizes she is very important to him.
The story line flows well as they learn to get along with each other and the others in both families. The intrigues, twists and turns will have you glued to the pages as they try to figure out who killed his old man and her grandfather. The romance between Angel and Jake is steamy, with a touch of consensual kink, mostly in the form of spanking. So, if you are looking for a different kind of crime family, one with a little southern flair, a steamy yet sweet romance, intrigue, danger and mystery then get your hands on JAKE: A SOUTHERN CRIME FAMILY NOVEL. I highly recommend this book.
Forget the Hatfields and McCoys, in a small Southern town, the Whitfields and Tallys are the real family feud. So for some unholy reason, Jake Whitfield’s old man and Angel Tally’s grandfather wrote codicils to their wills the night before they died in a suspicious fire. The codicils require Jake and Angel to marry or lose their inheritances.
Jake feels like a man with two faces. One he presents to his brothers and the public: the criminal willing to step on anyone for a buck while mercilessly protecting the business. The other: the lonely man wanting a better life for himself and his family and working with an FBI agent to make it happen.
To Jake, marrying Angel makes sense. With her family’s help, he can fight the new criminal organization that’s moving into his town. Immersed in the criminal world, there is no hope for Angel, but her brother is still young. She will do anything to protect him from that way of life and whoever killed their grandfather, even marry a despised Whitfield. And Angel never forgot about the sexy incident with Jake in high school ten years earlier. And if she has to go along with a Whitfield-Tally marriage, she wants a replay.
No excerpt available.
© 2003-2026