Eve Vaughn

Hostile Takeover is wickedly good writing and the collaboration of Eve Vaughn and Shara Azod is sheer genius. Lydia Morris is a new hire at Garrison Advertising and although she gets along well with her co-workers, she remains professionally detached, much to the chagrin of Ryder Garrison. Ryder wants Lydia real bad and hopes she’ll drop the façade and show him she wants him too. When the opportunity arises to collaborate on an ad campaign, Ryder uses this as an excuse to get Lydia alone. show more Lydia has successfully fought her feelings for Ryder but being alone with him might be too much. Ryder makes her forget her rule to never date within the workplace. Yet, Ryder is relentless in his pursuit of Lydia. Just a kiss and her resolve melts away. The line between business and pleasure is crossed. Lydia is terrified of her feelings for Ryder because her previous office romance ended in disastrous results. Ryder is frustrated because he really loves Lydia and knows she loves him but their love won’t stand a chance if she continues to fight her feelings.

Hostile Takeover by Eve Vaughn and Shara Azod was the most entertaining novel I read this month. The story initially seems like a light romance but as the plot develops it touches on important issues that affect real life relationships. The novel pulls on many emotions such as passion, pain, frustration and satisfaction and all these play out very realistically throughout the story. Lydia and Ryder’s passion is like a force of its own and this interracial couple knows how to steam up the sheets. Lydia’s past experiences have created such intense emotional pain, she’s paralyzed and incapable of wholly loving Ryder without fearing she will get hurt again. Ryder’s frustration is clear throughout most of the novel because like most real men, he knows what he wants and Lydia is it. He’s not in it to quit but to truly love this woman for life.

Thankfully despite all the adversity they face along the way, they both find satisfaction in knowing that love is not perfect but they are perfect for each other. Despite Lydia’s scars, Ryder loves her wholeheartedly. As far as characters go, Lydia is an interesting character because to the world she is seen as a woman with a serious face and sensible clothing. In Ryder’s eyes, she becomes this woman with a rich brown complexion, risqué locks and her understated yet sexy outfits might as well be a stripper’s costume for all the temptation it brings him. I also like the complexity of her personality because she reminds me of many women who excel in careers but have poor judgment in choosing healthy relationships. Ryder is foot after foot of pure deliciousness with his dark blond, wavy hair and beautiful piercing green eyes. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of him because he seemed more interested in having sex with Lydia than actually getting to know her as a person. However, as the story progressed so did his true intentions and I really connected with him and wanted him to find love and happiness with Lydia. Put Lydia and Ryder together in this novel and black and white simply equals Passion with a capital P. Overall, Hostile Takeover is really entertaining stuff with real substance. I can’t wait for more joint projects from these authors.

~ Susan for ARe Cafe show less

There was a good bit of angst. For some reason, I really love the storylines where the hero is mean and hurts the heroine over a misunderstanding and has to earn her forgiveness (like in [b:Love Me, Still|3061453|Love Me Still|Maya Banks|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1365993372s/3061453.jpg|3092358]). Not sure why that is a foil I enjoy, but this book definitely had it. I think the hero was a little over the top in expressing his anger, to the point of being problematic, but I so love show more this trope I am giving it a pass. But once the misunderstanding is cleared up and the sexin' takes place, I pretty much am done with the story.

Re-read in July 2017: still appreciate the angst and the traumatized heroine show less

This is a second chance romance story. It's one of my favourite genres but the reasons for leaving or splitting up originally don't always work.
This for me really worked. I was drawn in from the first chapter.

It was interesting as the heroine is slightly older than the Hero and there are racial issues.

The heroine has to attend a function to do with her pursuit of her career and she is drugged and gang raped. This leads to her breaking up with the Hero and not returning home to her father show more and ranch life.

She returns for her dad's marriage and to meet her new step mum, after 7 years.
The Hero is understandably angry, she said some nasty stuff to him when she broke it off to convince him to stop pursuing her.

A sticky point for some will be that during the separation is that the heroine is celibate and the Hero gets lost in drinking and women when they initially break up.
I hate it when authors do this but for me in this book it worked.
The Hero is heartbroken when the heroine breaks it off and really looses himself, he has no reason to think there is any future with the heroine, he tried to persuade her to work things out, not knowing about the rape and she cut him up with the things she said.
The heroine's celibacy is based on her trauma and fear of the attack so that makes sense, shes seeing a therapist.

The only issues I had was it wasn't right not to discuss the attack when it happened with the Hero, her dad or even the police, to prevent it happening to anyone else but it is discussed, and having little understanding of this sort of experience who knows....

Also the Hero's brother felt things didn't add up and it didn't seem like her to act the way she did, he seems to have more faith in her than the Hero but then he's so spitting mad he can't see straight.

The Hero when he steps up is amazing. He offers to leave the ranch and live in New York with her and even marry her without sex on the table if it means having a life with her and giving up having their own children as there are issues with that too.
His turn around is quick, he is undeterred in his devotion for her.

HEA.

There is another woman on the scene before they work things out but there are no scenes of intimacy, in fact because the heroine is around it causes him to break things off with her permenantely.

💔💕💞
👗👚🐎🐴 show less

This was a dark read set in the future where the poor people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives. Huge chunks of the female population were killed years ago by an untested breast cancer vaccination. This made the ratio of men to women 3/1. Instead of trying to make up for this loss in good ways The Run was created where rich men could “capture” a woman to do whatever they wished with. Her family was given “credits” to compensate but this game was dehumanizing and often the men show more who “won” the women were sick twisted abusive men.

The male and female leads in this book were reminiscent of a beauty and beast type love story. Even though it’s a long time before there is any healthy love introduced. The male Dare O’Shaughnessy was one of the richest men in this world gone wrong. He is mean and ruthless and will not take the word no from anyone. He destroys lives with a flick of his hand. He also owns “The Run” now inherited from his sick and twisted deceased father. One day he sees this woman that he has to have and in his mind there is no question she will be his for as long as he wants her and then will discard her. When this woman wants nothing to do with him he does everything within his power to bring her to her knees.

Aya Smith and her uncle run a bar in the slum part of the current “poor” world. They barely make enough to survive and Aya does her best to downplay that she is a woman by having a shaved head and wearing baggy ill fitting clothes. Despite her circumstances she is a very strong willed, opinionated woman who refuses to let the rich treat her like she is nothing. When she comes under the radar of Dare and he gives her his proposition of being basically his sex slave for as long as he wants her she literally throws is back in his face setting Dare off to do horrible things to her uncle and their bar to make her desperate enough to have to join The Game to get the money needed to get her uncle out of jail.

For more than 60% of this book Dare was a horrible person that you just couldn’t see any redemption in. Eventually we get flashbacks to his childhood and see why he is the man he is today. Its not excusable but he knew no other way to be. His main goal was to break the spirit of Aya and then discard her. Problem was once he broke her something inside of him broke open also and all these emotions that were beat out of him as a kid were suddenly there for him to deal with and he didn’t know how to handle that.

Dare does his best to redeem himself not only for Aya but also with how he conducts business. But he had to do the one thing he didn’t want to ever do and that was let Aya go.

There is a happy ending for Aya and Dare but even though Dare shut down the The Game we find out that there is a more sinister thing called The Auction that women and children are being kidnapped for. That is the next book in the series and throughout this one you find out who the main characters are going to be in that one and this reader is hook into this sick and twisted dystopia world and look forward to the next book. show less