Expose Me

June 2, 2014
The multi-author Fifth Avenue series reaches a satisfactory conclusion (following Caitlin Crews’s Scandalize Me) via a well-trod path. Super-wealthy, super-sexy Alex Diaz and his college friends are determined to bring utter ruin to Jason Treffen, whose high-class pimping lead to the death of Alex’s college friend, Sarah. To get his revenge, Alex enlists Chelsea Maxwell, a daytime TV host who wants to pursue a career in serious journalism, to blindside Jason on live TV. Alex is not quite willing to promise her a job in exchange for throwing her career away on air, but he’s willing to sleep with her to soften her up. While the plot moves quickly and the characters both exhibit vulnerability enough to make them sympathetic, it relies too much on the cliché of a strong, dominant woman who secretly needs a stronger, more dominant man to take charge of her. Nonetheless, the story closes the series in a thematically appropriate way and will appeal to readers who enjoyed the earlier books.

July 1, 2014
In the third installment in the summer's multiple-author Fifth Avenue series, Alex Diaz, the onetime college roommate of Hunter Grant (in Scandalize Me) and Austin Treffen (in Avenge Me), takes his turn in the trio's plan to annihilate evil pimp and blackmailer Jason Treffen, Austin's billionaire father, who maintains a public persona as a strong advocate for women's rights. Alex, an international media mogul, decides to use Chelsea Michaels, a celebrity-talk-show host, to expose Jason Treffen's true self to the public. Chelsea, like Alex, does not believe in relationships, and she sees sex as part of health maintenance. Both Alex and Chelsea have beauty, wealth, and success, but even though Chelsea talks about an idyllic childhood in the South, her reality was closer to Alex's own grim experiences in the Bronx. The strength in this series lies in characters who seem to have it all but must learn to trust and love as they work together to stop a monster from destroying the lives of more young women.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)