Book Journey

Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck lawyer. But just when he’s about to hit rock bottom, he stumbles upon a business with the potential to solve all of his problems.

In Waverly’s new line of work, he comes to the aid of people in desperate need of cash. But there’s a catch. His clients must be terminally ill and willing to sign over rights to their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime. Waverly then finds investors eager to advance them thousands of dollars—including a hefty broker’s fee for himself—in exchange for a significant return on their investment once the clients take their last breath.

The stakes get higher when Waverly brokers the policy of the cancer-stricken wife of Lawrence Erickson, a high-powered lawyer who’s bucking to become the next U.S. Attorney General. When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, both Waverly and Erickson—who has some skeletons of his own to hide—are unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder.

I have read Pamela Samuels Young before when I was introduced to her by reading Murder On The Down Low.  Another enjoyable read, I was excited to have the opportunity to meet up with her again in Buying Time.  Except this time, I had better be packing a weapon as the territory is filled with high crime.

A fast paced thrill ride through interesting and well put together characters.  As the pages turn the plot thickens and I found myself reading as fast as the pace seemed to have been set by author Pamela Samuels Young. At times I couldn’t imagine what would happen next and at other times I was laughing out loud (this always gets looks form my husband).   was impressed that as the book came to a close no loose ends were left untied.   What we had was a neatly wrapped book that left me clinging to the words throughout the next few days and really thinking about the companies in the book.

I don’t read a lot of legal thrillers but when I find this genre with Pamela’s name attached to it I do not hesitate to pick it up.  Well written and enjoyable!

About Pamela Samuels Young

Corporate attorney Pamela Samuels Young has always abided by the philosophy that you create the change you want to see. Fed up with never seeing women or people of color depicted as savvy, hot shot attorneys in the legal thrillers she read, Pamela decided to create her own characters. Despite the demands of a busy legal career, Pamela accomplished her ambitious goal by rising at four in the morning to write before work, dedicating her weekends to writing and even spending her vacation time glued to her laptop for ten or more hours a day.

The Essence magazine bestselling author now has four fast-paced legal thrillers to show for her efforts: Every Reasonable Doubt (BET Books, February 2006), In Firm Pursuit (Harlequin, January 2007), Murder on the Down Low (Goldman House Publishing, September 2008) and Buying Time (Goldman House Publishing, November 2009). New York Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel described Buying Time, Pamela’s first stand-alone novel, as a “deftly plotted thriller that combines the best of Lisa Scottoline and Robert Crais.”

Pamela has achieved a successful writing career while working as Managing Counsel for Labor and Employment Law for a large corporation in Southern California. Prior to that, she served as Employment Law Counsel for Raytheon Company and spent several years with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP in Los Angeles. A former journalist, Pamela began her broadcasting career as a production assistant at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, where she was quickly promoted to news writer. To escape the chilly Detroit winters, she returned home to Los Angeles and worked at KCBS-TV as a news writer and associate producer.

My Amazon Rating

I received my copy through Pump Up Your Book

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families,left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

I would say that is the best book I have read this year.  I have often enjoyed fiction stories that are entwined with a taste of non fiction as well and that is what we have here.  What a fascinating way to piece a story together!  Set in Seattle during World War II, Jamie Ford has based this book around the details of 1942 and the evacuation of all Japanese ancestry to camps featuring Henry as a young man of 12 years old as well as present age Henry in 1986.

From the very first page I fell in love with this story.  I am amazed how little I know of this time period and reading

about what happened to those of Japanese ancestry during the war really was heart wrenching.  I could imagine what it felt like to be separated from everything you knew – home, job, life, material possessions… all taken away.  All because of your heritage.  The characters in Keiko’s family were wonderfully created as loving and positive and they stayed a family through thick and thin.  They were portrayed the exact opposite of Henry’s family, and that is a large part of this story.

The Panama Hotel, which is featured in this book – still exists today as a tea house and the in the story, the articles that are mentioned to have been found in this hotel is true and you can go there even today and see many of the items on display.

I could go on and on RAVING about this book.  It is a wonderful read as well as a deep and intense look into our history.  Highly recommended for historical fiction fans as well as fans of light romance.