Title: Ruthless
Series: True Brothers MC
Author: Gillian Archer
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: April 12, 2016
Publisher: Loveswept
ASIN: B018CHA1D8
Every girl needs a guardian angel—even if he wears black leather. In the first novel of her scintillating True Brothers MC series, Gillian Archer introduces readers to a sexy-as-sin biker...and the woman wild enough to tame him.
After dinner with the most arrogant man in the world, Jessica Miller is shocked when her blind date tries to maul her in the parking lot. Enter “Zag”: the brooding, bruising alpha male who jumps off his motorcycle and teaches the jerk a lesson he won’t forget. After getting one taste of a bad boy who lives on the edge, Jessica’s hooked. Zag’s willing to give her the ride of her life. But she needs to wrap her arms around his powerful chest and hold on—tight.
Zag knows firsthand that the True Brothers MC isn’t for the faint of heart. He only intends to show beautiful, innocent Jessica a few cheap thrills to satisfy her curiosity. But the more he lets her in, the more Zag comes to depend on her gentle touch to help heal the wounds that he’s been denying for so long. Now, a rival gang has set its sights on Jessica, and Zag must step up once again. He just hopes he can go the distance to protect the woman he loves.
My rating:
Jessica Miller is almost raped on the parking lot by her blind date, when a guardian angel in black leather and with an even blacker scowl appears. Jess has no idea that an "innocent" invitation for a drink in thanks will spur her transition from her vanilla, safe, Norman Rockwell-like world into the world of leather, motorcycles and brooding and protective men.
Though this story started almost like a PSA (leading your drunk blind date to your car, going alone to a stranger's house, texting a stranger your address after they "stole" your phone number), I sort of liked it for its Romancelandia tropes. A rather ingenuous and naive woman falling in lust with a dangerous-looking biker that just happens to save her life...Then she sees something she wasn't supposed to see and the big, bad biker claims her as his own to protect her.
But then the tropes (and the story) dragged on for too long. Jessica was, beside her TSTL moments at the beginning, too judgmental, rather classist and elitist in lieu of who she was dating. Zag was simply an asshole caveman and even those few glimpses into his thoughts we got (the book was otherwise written from Jessica's point of view), didn't really convince me he saw the woman as anything more than a bed warmer. That final about face gave me quite a whiplash, to be honest.
That's what you get with a story written in first person POV—disconnect from one of the main characters. And if the story is written from an annoying blonde fish-out-of-water woman, it simply grates. She started annoying me when she spoke and when she thought, constantly jumping to conclusions, constantly doubting Zag (unless he was holding her—which mostly happened when they were naked).
Theirs wasn't romance, it wasn't even a relationship, since he never talked about himself and even those little cuddles he gave her occasionally, seemed more like appeasing gestures, to keep her coming back for more. It was lust, pure and simple, and it got old rather fast.
This is one opposites-attract stories (the two had absolutely nothing in common!) that just didn't work.
2 stars, bitchslappable heroine/hero, contemporary, contemporary romance, Gillian Archer, suspense/mystery/adventure/thriller
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