Four Seconds to Lose (Ten Tiny Breaths #3)
by K.A. Tucker
Summary: When a gorgeous young dancer walks through his door, a strip club owner must decide whether to follow his rules or his heart in the third novel by the author of One Tiny Lie and Ten Tiny Breaths.
Owning a strip club isn’t the fantasy most guys expect it to be. With long hours, a staff with enough issues to keep a psych ward in business, and the police regularly on his case, twenty-nine-year-old Cain is starting to second guess his unspoken mission to save the women he employs. And then blond, brown-eyed Charlie Rourke walks through his door, and things get really complicated. Cain abides by a strict “no sleeping with the staff” rule. But being around Charlie challenges Cain’s self-control…and it’s been a long time since any woman has done that.
Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Rourke needs a lot of money, really fast, in order to vanish before it’s too late. Taking her clothes off for men makes her stomach curl but Charlie tells herself that at least she’s putting her acting and dancing skills to good use. And though her fellow dancers seem eager to nab their sexy, sophisticated, and genuinely caring boss, she’s not interested. After all, Charlie Rourke doesn’t really exist—and the girl pretending to be her can't get distracted by romance.
Unfortunately, Charlie soon discovers that developing feelings for Cain is inevitable, and that those feelings may not be unrequited—but losing him when he finds out what she’s involved with will be more painful than any other sentence awaiting her.
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Source: I purchased a Kindle copy.
Review:
If I’m honest, I can admit that I didn’t really want to read this. I didn’t like Cain very much and I’m not sure why. So when I say that it was probably the best book in the series so far, it’s obvious how much my opinion turned around. Which is my absolute favorite thing about K.A. Tucker. She gives me this POV I swear I’m gonna hate and I love it.
Cain’s story ended up being amazing. I gained so much respect and admiration for the type of person he was, especially when I realized that owning a strip club isn’t something he did for money, power, or sex. He kept it open even when he didn’t want to because he knew he was giving the girls a decent place to work and keeping them off of the streets and out of the seedy clubs he knew about. I think I expected him to be a creepy strip club owner, even when I saw how much the other characters liked him in the earlier books, so I’m happy that he ended up being one of my favorite characters.
Charlie was an interesting character, too. She was full of secrets and couldn’t trust anyone. She wanted out of her lifestyle, but knew there was no way she could just quit doing what she was doing. So she thought, away from the eye of her stepdad, she could work at Cain’s club and try to save up enough money to disappear. I liked her, but I also felt weirdly protective of Cain and the other characters I’ve grown to love, so I had hoped that she wouldn’t ruin their lives. I wanted her to stay, to go, to do the right thing, to disappear, and I couldn’t make up my mind the whole time.
Four Seconds to Lose was really amazing. I was so set on not reading it for so long and I’m glad I decided to. I love that K.A. Tucker is somehow able to make me care about characters I’m not so sure about by giving them a narration and putting them in the spotlight. And when they fall in love, I’m on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how on earth the relationship is possibly going to work out with such insane conflicts. I fall with them and I end up caring so much!
I highly recommend this series. I know my previous review of Five Ways to Fall said that I was glad I didn’t read the rest of the series because I didn’t have to, but I was wrong. I should have kept reading in order because the series is all the more amazing having done so. I swear, K.A. Tucker can’t write books as fast as I’d like them! These books are Must Reads for any fan of contemporary romance with a bit of suspense, conflict, and characters that aren’t cookie cutter perfect people. Each character has their own set of issues, but their stories are moving and heartwarming without being wholesome or preachy and I like that the author takes the seedy strip club setting and makes us love the characters without taking them away from that setting.
Labels: contemporary, mystery, New Adult, Review, romance
