Julia Sykes

But hatred is hard to cling to when your jailor becomes your protector.

Dr. Claudia Ellers is kidnapped and forced to patch up her captor’s buddy who has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder. She pushes the clawing fear aside when her instincts kick in. She may not be a surgeon, but she does what she has to in an effort to save the man’s life. But her ordeal is far from over. Bradley, her captor, wants to kill her, she knows too much. Her patient, Sean, won’t let that happen, but show more he also won’t let her leave. She should hate Sean, but his sexy, cocky attitude slowly whittles away at her defenses. She may have saved his life, but soon he’ll be saving hers many times over. Caught between fear and an unexplainable attraction, Claudia’s life is about to be turned upside down.

This book was Impossible to put down! Claudia was a woman with many secrets. Put into foster care after the death of her parents at the age of thirteen, we were bestowed with a bits and pieces of information that hinted at a very dark life at the hands of her stepmother and stepbrother. She hasn’t had a relationship since her early college days, she hasn’t read for pleasure or followed popular TV shows for years. She carries unimaginable guilt on her shoulders and has hardened her heart to everyone she’s ever met. She has no friends, no one who would miss her. Even her colleagues at work don’t know much about her except when to expect her at work. Summed up, her life was and still is dull. She was no shrinking violet and had no problem throwing barbed comments back at her captors. Foolish? Perhaps, but I liked seeing her feisty side come out every once in a while. The more time she spent with Sean, the more she learned about him, and what she saw, she liked. Surely a man who had a shelf full of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and books on carpentry couldn’t be all that bad, right? Then she decided to snoop around his room and discovered his “goody drawer”, and everything changed. I loved that she spent time working things out in her mind. Questions I had while reading this story were either answered or addressed by her.

Sean was both hero and anti-hero. He didn’t want any harm to come to Claudia, but he also couldn’t allow her to leave. Aside from being attracted to her beauty and her courage, he was also drawn to the vulnerability he saw bubble up from time to time. He knew something about pain, anguish and guilt. But that is where the similarities end. He’s had a few tastes of the burning passion between them, and he wants more, but he know he shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of her and her situation. Until she finds a secret he meant to keep from her. He has a wild kinky side. Surely a woman like Claudia would never want to be dominated so harshly?

Together, Sean and Claudia are the perfect protagonists for this particular story. While she has made it her life to heal and take care of people, Sean is the complete opposite. With him there’s anger, pain and danger but also surprisingly moments of absolute tenderness. This story was about so much more than just a woman who may or may not be suffering from a case of Stockholm Syndrome, and a man who could exploit her vulnerability to satisfy his needs. But when she finds the ultimate release under his domination, all her walls come down. And that, more than anything, scares the crap out of her. I felt her pain and uncertainty between fight or flight, and that one moment with Sean in the park had me close to tears. But the real surprise was the ending – when she finds out the truth about Sean. And that is why I said they were perfect characters for this story. Her history and his present are on a collision course with disaster. In my opinion, that made for some fantastic drama that I can’t wait to see carry over into book two.

Grab this book if you like a story with some really hot scenes toeing the line of darkness and danger, and a hint of romance. Yes, this story ends on a cliffhanger, but I’m more than willing to wait for their story to continue.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.

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I absolutely am in love with this book. Abigail is such a beautifully written broken character. Dane is every bit the psychopathic male main character you could hope for. The tension between these two is amazing. The spice is on point. The character development was amazing. The pacing was all you could hope for, it's a book that's easy to get lost in. Of course, we get the cliffy ending and I must know what's coming next. I highly recommend this one to all the dark romance lovers. I mean show more we've got stalker, masked man, touch her and die, possessive MMC vibes happening. It's everything you could want. show less

4.4 stars

There was something deeply personal and compelling about this book while at the same time made me feel guilty. I felt like I was eavesdropping or being voyeuristic in watching this story unfold. I'm looking forward to where this goes next.

For a book called Mafia Captive, there is very little mafia stuff. When I read a book that has a title like this and and synopsis that talks about a character being kidnapped, I'm expecting a romance that has a fast moving plot and external conflict. This book has so little plot. There is nothing that keeps this story moving or keeps me reading. I was so bored! The first part of this also felt very disconnected from the second half. We are told Ashlyn is in danger but none of that is shown show more on page until the very end. I also could not suspend my disbelief enough to believe that Joseph and Ashlyn would be hung up on each other to the point they're both miserable when separated after just two weeks. I think this is because we only read two sex scenes with them, which I thought were only fine, before the separation and then there is a time jump. This was a consistent problem with this book. The characters say they're in love, but we never see them fall in love. Joseph thinks a lot about his violent tendencies but we never really see any of that. Joseph talks about needing to run away and have a normal life but we never see exactly what drove him a way. All these things made it so much more difficult to get into and enjoy the story. One of my other problems is that Ashlyn is so scared and uncomfortable, especially of Marco, who I believe is supposed to be the other love interest, that it actually was not fun for me to read. I don't usually like a character being genuinly afraid of a love interest in the way it was here where I couldn't even see any affection between Ashlyn and Marco. It seems like a lot of people like this book and I'm happy for them but this once didn't work for me. show less