Hideaway by Penelope Douglas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Banks
Buried in the shadows of the city, there’s a hotel called The Pope. Ailing, empty, and dark, it sits abandoned and surrounded by a forgotten mystery. But you think it’s true, don’t you, Kai Mori? The story about the hidden 12th floor. The mystery of the dark guest who never checked in and never checks out. You think I can help you find that secret hideaway and get to him, don’t you? I will never betray him. So sit tight. On Devil’s Night, the hunt will be coming to you.
Kai
You have no idea what I seek, Little One. You don’t know what I had to become to survive three years in prison for a crime I would gladly commit again. I want that hotel, I want to find him, and I want this over. I want my life back. But the more I’m around you, the more I realize this new me is exactly who I was meant to be. So come on, kid. Don’t chicken out. My house is on the hill. So many ways in, and good luck finding your way out. I’ve seen your hideaway. Time to see mine.
Hideaway
“You don’t know what I had to become to survive three years in prison for a crime I would gladly commit again.”
The following ratings are out of 5:
Audio/Narration: 🎧🎧🎧🎧
Romance: 💚💙💜🖤❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📘📗📕📙📘
World building: 🌏🌏🌍🌏🌎
Character development: 😎🤨🙂🙃🤓
The Setting: Meridian City & Thunder Bay Ontario.
The Hero: Kai Mori – went to prison for nearly three years for beating up a cop. The cop had been abusing his younger sister. Kai’s friend William was in love with the cop’s sister so they beat him to get him to stop. Kai has secrets.
The heroine: Nik Banks – wears men’s clothes. She lived in the Torrence home and disguised herself as a boy when she was in her teens. She was a Damon’s secret and he wanted to keep her to himself.
The Love Story: Kai met Banks in a confessional the year before he graduated high school. He was confessing his sins while she was sitting on the priests side. Though she dressed like a homeless tomboy he was interested right away. Years later they meet again when he was looking for Damon.
The Four Horsemen consist of Michael Crist, Kai Mori, Damon Torrence and Will Grayson. Damon was sent to prison for 33 months, while Kai and William were sentenced to 28 months each. Michael wasn’t arrested but felt guilt the entire time his friends were away, thinking it was his fault. In Corrupt, the guys had recently gotten out of prison and were doing their best to get revenge. Only things went bad and Damon tried to kill them along with Michael’s brother Trevor.
Damon ran away and the last word they guy’s had was that he was in Russia, though Kai figured out that Damon was much closer to home. He figured out that Damon was in an abandoned hotel owned by his father, across the street from Kai’s dojo. There is a rumor that the hotel has a hidden twelfth floor that the elevator doesn’t stop at.
I know the next book is about Damon and I don’t know how he will be able to be reformed. Though he was one of the four horsemen, Damon was evil in the second half of Corrupt and in this entire book. Not only was he threatening Kai, his whole relationship with Banks is crazy.
He wants Banks to only love him. Supposedly Banks lived with him from the time she was twelve and he lives like any son of a rich man, but she has never tasted steak and she wears his hand-me-downs? I just don’t get it. Even if Banks’ father wouldn’t pay for her clothes and things, why wouldn’t Damon buy her stuff and didn’t she eat whatever everyone in the mansion ate? It is obvious that Damon loved her but some things just didn’t make sense. Despite that, the book is a good one. I liked the story, the characters and the suspense. The romance between Kai and Banks is a bit of a slow burn but it is steamy. I can’t wait to see what happens next in the series.
As for the Audio, the same narrators were used for this one as for Corrupt. I don’t know if I just got used to them more or what, but I liked the narration better in this one. My one negative in the last book was that the male narrator didn’t have a deep enough voice, he sounded too gentle to be such a bad boy as Michael Crist. However, I think he used a deeper inflection as Kai, so I liked him better in this book.
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