Sidebarred (A Legal Briefs Novella): The gang’s all back, and I couldn’t be happier (My thoughts on Book #3.5 in the Legal Briefs series)

Right off the bat, I have to say that as much as I loved Appealed, and while I thought that it was a fantastic ending to the Legal Briefs series, I still wasn’t quite ready for the series to end; mainly because I was loving the series so much. That’s definitely one of the main reasons why I was really excited when Emma Chase announced that she had written a novella for the Legal Briefs series. While I did think that Appealed was a great way to end the Legal Briefs series, I think that Sidebarred was an even better ending to the series.

Prior to Sidebarred’s release, I initially got the impression that Emma Chase had written the novella with the story shifting back and forth between each of the main characters from the series. It was only a few weeks before Sidebarred’s release that I found out that that wasn’t the case, and that Sidebarred was written solely from Jake’s point of view. Personally, as much as I love Stanton, Sofia and Brent, I think that Jake was definitely the perfect choice when it comes to which character from the series should be the protagonist of Sidebarred. At its core, the character development and internal conflict that Jake underwent throughout Sustained was all about wanting to be a part of Chelsea and the kids’ lives, while also thinking that he wasn’t capable of being a family man with a wife and kids.

Sustained pretty much ended with Jake realizing that he had become a family man without even realizing it, thanks largely in part to the “intervention” that Stanton, Sofia and Brent had for him. I love that we got a brief glimpse in one scene from Appealed of what Jake was like after he had embraced the idea of being a family man, with him acting like a protective father to one of the teenage girls in the family when she came to his work with him, and there was a boy there that could have easily made advances towards her. However, that whole scene was written from Brent’s point of view, so we didn’t get that much insight into what had happened with Jake, Chelsea and the kids after Sustained ended. That being said, Emma Chase did a fantastic job of really giving the readers of the Legal Briefs series an in depth look at Jake’s life as a husband to Chelsea, and a father figure to Chelsea’s nieces and nephews in Sidebarred.

When it comes to the plot of Sidebarred, while I’m not sure that the plot and the book as a whole would have worked as well had it been a full-length novel; I thought that it worked perfectly as a novella. The reason I say this is because while Jake and Chelsea do face various problems throughout the book that were genuinely interesting and got me completely invested in the story, the plot of the book and the conflict that Jake and Chelsea face in Sidebarred wasn’t big and dramatic enough to sustain a full-length novel, in my opinion. The plot of the book revolves primarily around the fact that Jake and Chelsea decide to have a baby after Chelsea had thought that she might be pregnant, only to discover that she wasn’t pregnant after all when she took a pregnancy test. I could be wrong about the exact timespan of the book, but Sidebarred takes place over the span of about a year and follows Jake and Chelsea as they try to get pregnant and then follows them through the pregnancy, while they also deal with problems involving the kids and their work. Nothing truly dramatic happens to them or any of the other characters throughout the book. Honestly, I’m perfectly okay with that because I think that the problems that Jake and Chelsea face both as a couple, as the problems that they deal with individually, while also raising Chelsea’s six nieces and nephews, are all very relatable. Plus, I’m really glad that Chase didn’t have Jake and Chelsea dealing with any major drama and angst in their marriage, such as having one of them cheat on the other, or at least be tempted to cheat.

Much like I thought Chase did a fantastic job of taking advantage of the overt storytelling opportunities that Chelsea having six nieces and nephews that were a relatively wide range of ages presented in Sustained, I thought she did a great job of that in Sidebarred as well. It was really interesting to see what all of the kids were like now that they were several years older. Chase definitely did a great job of showing how Jake has grown and changed as a person now that he and Chelsea are married and are raising Chelsea’s six nieces and nephews together, with Jake essentially serving as the father figure in the kids’ lives; while also keeping the writing for Jake very consistent with what he was like in Sustained.

I have to admit that there were a couple times throughout the book where I thought that Chase was foreshadowing the idea that something bad was going to happen to Chelsea and the baby. First, Jake discovered that Raymond had researched statistics about pregnant women being murdered or dying from pregnancy related complications. Second, Jake and Chelsea have a conversation at one point in the book where Jake tells Chelsea that he would choose to save her life if she and the baby ended up in a situation where both of their lives were in danger, and a choice had to made about saving one over the other. However, Chelsea said that she would want him to pick the baby over her, but Jake told her that he would still choose to save her.

I hate to give away too many spoilers regarding the ending of the book, but ultimately nothing bad happened to Chelsea or the baby. I will say that the circumstances of the baby’s birth were pretty interesting, though. Personally, I’m really glad that nothing bad actually happened to Chelsea or the baby. It would have been pretty upsetting to me if Chase had decided to write another book for the Legal Briefs series, only to have something bad happen to Jake, Chelsea, or any of the characters from the series. I’m also really glad that she didn’t have anything incredibly dramatic happen with any of the couples from the series; such as have them break up, or have one of the characters die. That just would have been way too, “How I Met Your Mother” for me, and as I said in my review for Tangled, I don’t want to be reminded of the series finale of How I Met Your Mother when I’m reading Emma Chase’s books, or any book for that matter.

One of the things that I found myself thinking about a lot as I was reading Sidebarred was my thoughts on Tied and how it served as the ending to the Tangled series. If you’ve read my review for Tied, you know that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book. As far as I’m concerned, Tied just didn’t have enough genuinely compelling material to make a truly good book. While I’m really happy that the Tangled series ended with Drew and Kate getting married, a lot of what happens in Tied really came across as boring, contrived and frustrating filler. If Chase really wanted to write about Drew and Kate’s wedding, I really think that she should have either written a short story about Drew and Kate’s wedding day, or she should have at least condensed the story down to a novella. Personally, I really could have done without the five minute plot cul-de-sac that involved Drew waking up hung-over and finding a girl in his hotel room, initially thinking that he had slept with her, only to quickly find out that he hadn’t slept with her after all; and that the girl was actually there with Billy, because they had gotten married. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad that Chase resolved Drew’s rivalry with Billy in Tied, but I definitely think that could have been handled a lot better.

Getting back to the subject of Sidebarred, once again without giving away too many spoilers regarding the ending of the book, as much as I loved the epilogue of Appealed and thought that it was really cute; I loved the epilogue of Sidebarred even more, and I thought that it was even cuter. It was a lot of fun to see what all of the characters were like seventeen years later, especially when it comes to all of the kids. I really enjoyed getting a glimpse of what the kids were like as adults and seeing what Jake and Chelsea’s relationship was like after being married for about twenty years at that point.

All things considered, while I’m definitely sad to see the Legal Briefs series end, I think that Sidebarred is an even better ending to the series than I thought Appealed was. Sidebarred definitely maintained my belief that the Legal Briefs series is even better than the Tangled series. Personally, I think that Sidebarred worked perfectly as a novella since none of the conflict that Jake and Chelsea had to deal with throughout the book was all that high stakes. It was really refreshing to read a romance novel that didn’t involve the characters having affairs and wasn’t overflowing with angst and drama. It was really great to read a romance novel about a couple that was very happy together and supported each other as they dealt with problems that I think a lot of couples out there can relate to.

A part of me wishes that Stanton and Sofia had had just a little bit more of a presence in Sidebarred, because if I’m being honest, they were somewhat forgettable in this book. The parts featuring Brent and Kennedy were a lot of fun and very memorable by comparison, though. To be fair, that could be because they were the focus of Appealed, and it wasn’t all that long ago that I read that book compared to how long it’s been since I read and reviewed Overruled.

In case anybody who reads this review hasn’t already heard the news, Emma Chase has recently announced that her next book series will be called Royally. The title of the first book in the series will be Royally Screwed, and it’s scheduled to be released in September of this year. If you’d like to know more about the Royally series, you can read about it here. Honestly, I’m even more excited about the Royally series than I was when I first discovered the Tangled series, or when Emma Chase announced the Legal Briefs series. The premise of the series sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’ll definitely be reading and reviewing the Royally series as each book is released.

That being said, my final score for Sidebarred is 10 out of 10.