ARC Review: The Big Fix by Holly James

The Big Fix
Author: Holly James
Publication: Kensington (March 25, 2025)

Description: Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard meets The Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling in a modern blend of screwball action and romantic attraction when a case of mistaken identity lands a college professor on the run with a mysterious—and dangerously hot—fixer . . .

When bookish Penny Collins reluctantly lets her sister drag her to an estate sale at a neighbor’s house, she’s hoping for a little diversion rummaging through dusty antiques. Instead, she ends up in a public squabble over candlesticks with the deceased owner’s nephew, Anthony—right before a dead body tumbles out of a closet.

Penny’s plan for the summer involved finalizing tenure at the university where she’s a computer sciences professor. Instead, she’s suddenly on the run with a man she barely knows, scaling walls, evading bullets, and accidentally stabbing henchmen. It seems the wrong people have got it in their heads that she’s Anthony’s girlfriend and, by association, in possession of something they desperately need—and will do anything to get.

As for Anthony, he has a top-secret occupation as a fixer, but a recent fix went dangerously awry, and now he and Penny are dodging both a ruthless billionaire and the FBI. And it’ll take all of Penny’s plentiful savvy and common sense, in addition to Anthony’s particular set of skills, to survive long enough for her to see the next semester . . .

My Thoughts: This romantic thriller finds Penny Collins on the run with Anthony Pierce after innocently attending a house sale and discovering a body in the closet. Penny's sister Libby had some matchmaking in mind. All Penny wants is to finish up all the requirements for tenure at the university where she teaches computer science.

When the erroneous news spreads that Penny is Anthony's new girlfriend, she finds herself on the run from people who want to use her in order to get Anthony to tell what happened to a billionaire's missing wife Portia. 

Portia has been Anthony's friend since childhood. He promised her brother that he's take care of her when her brother died. They had gone their separate ways with Portia reinventing herself in California and marrying a tech billionaire and Anthony becoming an Econ major at Penn before joining his uncle's firm. His uncle was a highly successful and somewhat shady fixer. 

Now, Portia is missing, and her billionaire husbands isn't willing to let her go. She knows too much about his shady dealings.

Penny and Anthony fall in love while trying to elude the bad guys and find a way for Portia to begin a new life. 

This was an entertaining story. The cover which looks to me to be cartoonish and promising a light read doesn't really do justice to the more serious nature of the story inside. While there are some lighter moments, the book is more thriller than romance. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.