Hard Rules is absorbing and intense

Every time Lisa Renee Jones writes something, I NEED to read it. She's spell-binding. And this series has four books I'm dying to read :-D

Hard Rules

by Lisa Renee Jones
Dirty Money #1

Publication Date: August 9, 2016

Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
GOODREADS - AMAZON
THE AUTHOR

How bad do you want it?

The only man within the Brandon Empire with a moral compass, Shane Brandon is ready to take his family’s business dealings legitimate. His reckless and ruthless brother, Derek, wants to keep Brandon Enterprises cemented in lies, deceit, and corruption. But the harder Shane fights to pull the company back into the light, the darker he has to become. Then he meets Emily Stevens, a woman who not only stirs a voracious sexual need in him, but becomes the only thing anchoring him between good and evil.

Emily is consumed by Shane, pushed sexually in ways she never dreamed of, falling deeper into the all-encompassing passion that is this man. She trusts him. He trusts her, but therein lies the danger. Emily has a secret, the very thing that brought her to him in the first place, and that secret could destroy them both.

MY REVIEW

Intensity is what comes to mind when I think of this story. It radiates tension throughout  the whole book. Tension from the family feud in Shane's life, the many battles he has to fight to keep his business safe from dangerous claws, some of which belong to his father and brother.

Tension that rattles Emily's inner thoughts as she juggles all the secrets the reader is unaware of, the dark past she fears to disclose to the stranger who is unsettling her anonymous life in Denver and her emotional defenses.

Tension that vibrates between this man and woman, so hot and palpable that kidnaps the mind.

I loved the smart, taunting, arousing dialogues that build around they meeting and not being able to walk away from each other. Without real action, the story manages a steady, taut sense of foreboding and danger that kept me on edge all along.  From the impending ruin of Brandon Enterprises due to bad blood and shady pacts to the secretive guilt Emily carries behind Shane's back, every chapter felt loaded with forbidden love, dark liaisons, and the trademark from this author that translates into witty dialogues and intelligent characters.

I really enjoyed all the duels, figuratively speaking, Shane battles with his family and in his growing relationship with Emily. When I reached the last thrilling page, I realized my agony was just about to start. There's a second part and it's not in my hands :-(