Rush (Breathless #1)
by Maya Banks
Summary: Gabe, Jace, and Ash: three of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. They’re accustomed to getting anything they want. Anything at all. For Gabe, it’s making one particular fantasy come true with a woman who was forbidden fruit. Now she’s ripe for the picking...
When Gabe Hamilton saw Mia Crestwell walk into the ballroom for his hotel’s grand opening, he knew he was going to hell for what he had planned. After all, Mia is his best friend’s little sister. Except she’s not so little anymore. And Gabe has waited a long time to act on his desires.
Gabe has starred in Mia’s fantasies more than once, ever since she was a teenager with a huge crush on her brother’s best friend. So what if Gabe’s fourteen years older? Mia knows he’s way out of her league, but her attraction has only grown stronger with time. She’s an adult now, and there’s no reason not to act on her most secret desires.
As Gabe pulls her into his provocative world, she realizes there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him or how exacting his demands can be. Their relationship is intense and obsessive, but as they cross the line from secret sexual odyssey to something deeper, their affair runs the risk of being exposed—and vulnerable to a betrayal far more intimate than either expected.
Source: I borrowed a kindle copy from my local library
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Review:
I should just stop trying to read billionaire romances that everyone else loves. I get into a mood where I want to read romance with a bit of spice to it and I think that maybe I'll find of these I'll enjoy. And then I don't. I just need to stop trying.
There's something so cold and clinical about these types of situations and it loses all of the things I love about a good romance novel, where two people just click and can't avoid each other. The contract and the I'm-going-to-take-over-your-life-and-work thing just sucks all of the romance out of it for me. I mean, sure, I like the fact that the guy gets to take control and those things give him extra power, but I think it's a shitty plot device designed to create a situation in which the heroine wouldn't think to refuse and makes being bent over a desk by your boss seem more... reasonable? I don't know.
I think I just need to stick with regular people romance (as in no powerful and controlling billionaires) and paranormal romance (when a guy's need to take control can be part of his animal instincts and not just him being a rich jackass).
Rush was better than Fifty Shades because Mia wasn't annoying and she didn't refer to any inner goddess or bite her lip a thousand times. Also, I think it was better because, while the arrangement was crappy and not something I like, at least I could pretend like the characters knew what they wanted because they had a history of knowing each other and being in the same circles and weren't strangers. So, if you like these kinds of romances, it's better than Fifty. I prefer the Bared to You series over this one, though, because Mia didn't have quite as much spunk as that heroine and because Gabe was also older and I'm not really into the 15 year age gaps.
(Also, I think it's hilarious that people say the contract aspect makes it a rip off of Fifty Shades when Fifty Shades is freaking Twilight fan fiction in the first place, but that's another story).
Overall, it wasn't bad, if this sort of story if your thing. For me, these just don't work. The only one I ever really enjoyed was Fixed on You by Laurelin Paige, and even then I wonder if I did because I expected to hate it more. In any case, because I realize that I should just not be reading these books in the first place, I'm giving it 3 stars to be fair.
Labels: billionaire romances, erotica, Review, romance
