The Fixer by Lee Winter: Review

AD – This book was gifted for the purpose of a review

Are you in the market for a romance that is such a slow-burner that it takes two books to get going? Look no further than The Fixer by Lee Winter. The protagonists are a classic case of opposites attract. First we have Eden Lawless. An activist with a yearning to do the right thing, at all costs. At the other end of the scale is Michelle Hastings, a career-driven business woman who makes things happen for people with power and money. Whether those things are right or wrong is none of her concern.

The Fixer by Lee Winter: The Plot

The first character we are introduced to is Eden Lawless. Within the first sentence of the book, the reader becomes aware that Eden has an arch nemesis. This is relevant, grab hold of this piece of information and keep it with you. As an activist, Eden is following in her mother’s footsteps. Like her, Eden will stop at nothing to do the right thing. Particularly when it means that a person in power who is doing wrong will be brought to justice.

This is how she acquired an arch nemesis, Mayor Francine Wilson. A decade after their run-in, Eden is living away from her home town of Wingapo. Staunchly avoiding it in fact. That is until she gets a call from the fixers, whose CEO Michelle Hastings has handpicked her to go head-to-head with Mayor Wilson again. With an unimaginable amount of money on offer, Lawless finds it very difficult to say no. And so, their unusual working relationship begins.

With Eden moving back to Wingapo for a few months to carry out her plan, Michelle keeps in touch with daily calls. Eden hatches a plan to disrupt Mayor Wilson’s next election and confronts some ghosts in her home town while she’s at it. Whilst there is actually no romance between the two women, they clearly have strong feelings for one another. It’s difficult to say whether their relationship is the sub-plot or the star of the show, I suppose it depends what you are looking for from the book.

The Fixer by Lee Winter: Review

This book doesn’t neatly sit into a particular genre in my opinion. Is it a lesbian romance? With only two face-to-face meetings between the protagonists at the beginning and end of the book, I’d say it only very loosely fits into the romance category. Yet it is cleverly done in that their relationship is clearly noteworthy, even without either character fully acknowledging it. Yet it doesn’t fall neatly into any other category either. Thriller? Not really, there is an exciting storyline but nothing so meaty as you would expect from a thriller.

Yet sometimes, not falling neatly into a category can be beneficial. In this case, it allowed the book to flow without having to follow any expected plot map. For me, that made it quite gripping. I had no idea where the story was going, what the outcome would be for the characters or indeed whether their relationship was even relevant until right at the end of the book.

Both Eden’s fight against Mayor Wilson and her relationship with Michelle provided storylines that made me want to keep reading. The mystery surrounding each sub-plot did give the book a certain unputdownable quality that I rarely find in fiction of any kind. A sequel to The Fixer called Chaos Agent explores the next step in the relationship between Eden and Michelle. Will I be reading it? Absolutely.

The Fixer by Lee Winter is now available both on Kindle and as a paperback. (Affiliate link).