Name: Sleepless in Las Vegas
ISBN: 9780373718931

Colleen Collins

In training to become a private investigator, Valerie LeRoy finds herself working with Drake Morgan and even though they disagree on techniques, they develop an instant attraction that makes it difficult to concentrate on an arson investigation.

Sleepless in Las Vegas

Angela Guilherme

*I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

When the story mentions another couple I was suspicious that their story could have been told in other books and, as it turns out, it did. However, I couldn't find anywhere any reference to these books (and a third one, who tells the story of a secondary character in this one) being part of a series which struck me as odd... But perhaps it was purposeful since Sleepless in Las Vegas can be read as a standalone.

The story begins when Valerie LeRoy, an intern for one of the most reputable private detectives in Las Vegas, decides to take a case on her own. The case in question consists in trying to seduce the fiancé of a Russian woman and gather evidence that he's cheating on her. But things are not as they seem and the man she's hired to seduce, Drake Morgan, turns out to be a private investigator also and he doesn't even have a girlfriend, let alone a fiancée.

Drake is determined to recover the engagement ring (a family heirloom) that his father gave as collateral to the Russian loan shark Drake owed money to. So he stakeouts his brother's night club, since he's also a partner of the loan shark. And when he realizes that Val served as a distraction so that his house could be set on fire, and that his dog almost died in the process, he resorts to her boss to find out just how much Val knew about what was really going on.

Eventually Drake is convinced that Val wasn't acting with malice and that she was just naive in believing the supposed bride's story and he ends up accepting the proposal of her boss to temporarily use her offices and accept the responsibility to be Val's mentor, since she has to stop working for health reasons. And that's how they end up working together to catch the mobster.

Obviously there is sexual tension between them, and working together only exacerbates it, even if they sometimes drive each other crazy... But despite all the sexual tension, there are no spicy scenes.

I liked the development that the author gives the protagonists, both with baggage (his, that he subjected his parents to pay off his gambling debts; hers, that she lost everything on hurricane Katrina), and I especially liked Val because even though she's lost everything, she never lost hope and optimism, nor the will to work for what she wants. Drake is darker, but he works really well as the opposite of Val's sunny personality.

The ending is more than expectable and, even though I liked it, I thought it was all too fast. To me it would have worked better if the ending had been left for an epilogue, after they had had time to get to know each other better...