JUSTICE: Galillee Falls Book One - Jennifer Harlow

It's hard being a regular police officer in Galilee Falls, a city with the highest concentration of superheroes and villains in the country. It's even harder watching your best friend, the man you're secretly in love with your whole life, planning to marry another woman. Detective Joanna Fallon has to contend with both. When the vilest supervillain in the city's history, Alkaline, the former crime boss who can shoot acid from his wrists, escapes from the maximum security prison, the whole city is gripped by panic. Leading the pursuit is Captain Harry O'Hara, Joanna's boss and secret lover, and the city's champion superhero Justice, who caught the villain last time, much to Joanna's chagrin. Before her father was murdered in a mugging twenty years earlier, Joanna worshiped the hero, but when he disappeared and failed to save her father, that adoration turned to contempt for all supers. After Alkaline attacks too close to home and targets Joanna as his next victim, tough-as-nail Joanna has to contend with her increasing fear while struggling to choose between her life-long crush and her new-found love.

At turns vulnerable and fierce, equally mordant and winsome, Joanna is an earnest yet emotionally damaged heroine, who despite the tough breaks of her childhood sees the good in people and vow to protect her beloved city at all costs. An ass-kicking petite firecracker with no superpowers of her own, she charges after supervillains unflinchingly, never losing her wit even when facing her toughest fight. With a coy blend of whimsy and vivid imagination, she delivers both humor and thrills in an action-packed and edgy blend of comic book cool, fantasy-noir, and bitter-sweet romance.

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Jennifer Harlow had me with MIND OVER MONSTERS: A F.R.E.A.K.S. Investigation and has kept me with TO CATCH A VAMPIRE and a book in her Midnight Magic series, WHAT'S A WITCH TO DO....now I have another series of hers to love, Galilee Falls.
JUSTICE, book one in the series, is awesome. Joanna Fallon is a straight up, hard working detective in a city that has the highest concentration of supers..both heroes and villains. She has to be extra vigilant as she is normal, no extra powers, but it doesn't keep her from catching the bad guys and putting them super-villain prison.
There is plenty of action, secret love interest or two, gut-wrenching drama. I was in tears at one scene. I had one or two things figured out, but I can see how it would be missed by the characters in the book since it was right in front of them. And it's easy to miss that which we do not want to see.
Jennifer has made it easy to suspend belief that there is a world with superheroes and super-villains and the normal people who live with them.
I loved this book and can't wait for the next in the series. Hurry up Jennifer...