If
you’ve read my review for Overruled,
you’ll know that I said that I thought that it might be very difficult, if not
impossible, for Emma Chase to top Tangled
when it comes to deciding which of her books is my favorite and how I would
rank each of them. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I’m very excited
to say that Emma Chase did it. She completely topped Tangled with Sustained, and
I definitely think that Sustained is
her best book yet. That being said, I’ll admit that perhaps I’m being a bit
premature in saying that Sustained is
Emma Chase’s book yet since I haven’t read Appealed
at this point in time. However, if I had to say which of her books is my
favorite at the moment, it would definitely be Sustained; that being said, I’m totally open to the possibility
that I’ll end up thinking that she topped herself yet again once I read Appealed.
Based
on Overruled and Sustained alone, I have to say that I definitely think that the Legal Briefs series is even better than
the Tangled series. As much as I love
the Tangled series, it’s not without
its flaws, and I feel like the quality of the writing for the Tangled series as a whole definitely had
its share of ups and downs. Emma Chase’s writing for the Legal Briefs series on the other hand is definitely a lot stronger and
better than even her best writing for the Tangled
series was, in my opinion. Things that I felt could have been handled
better in Twisted and Tied in particular are handled a
lot better in the Legal Briefs
series.
For
starters, I’m really glad that she switched back and forth between Stanton and
Sofia’s points of view throughout Overruled
instead of writing most of the book from one character’s point of view and then
suddenly switching to a different character’s point of view towards the very
end of the book for the epilogue like she did with Twisted. Plus, as I said in my review for Overruled, I thought that Stanton’s dislike of JD was much more
understandable and easier to sympathize with than Drew’s dislike of Billy was
after Tangled. If you ask me, the
resolution of Stanton’s issues with JD was also handled a lot better than
Drew’s hatred towards Billy was resolved in Tied.
When
it comes to Sustained, there really
is a lot to love about this book, and it’s honestly kind of hard for me to know
where to start when it comes to talking about what I love about this book. For
starters, one thing that I’ve always felt that Emma Chase really excels at when
it comes to her books is being able to pretty much instantly get the readers
interested and invested in the story right off the bat. Whenever I’ve read one
of her books, I’ve always been able to get invested in the story within the
first few paragraphs, if not the first few sentences of the book, and that was
definitely the case with this book. It’s definitely a good thing that Chase’s
books aren’t the kind of books where the reader has to power through
approximately 50 or more pages before the story finally starts to get
interesting, especially considering the fact that her books are all less than
300 pages long. That’s something I’ve really come to appreciate about Chase’s
books since in addition to all of the books that I’ve reviewed in roughly the
past three to four months, possibly longer than that, I’ve also been reading
the book The Swan Gondola by Timothy
Schaffert so I can review it as well. I’m currently seventy pages into the
book, and I’m just now finally starting to get into the book.
