Five by J.A. Huss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five Aston has known Rory Shrike for as long as he can remember. He played with her in the sandbox. He went to every damn horse show just to be supportive. He helped her with her French, walked her home from school, and faked his test scores just to stay with her a little longer and not be sent off to college early. 
But eventually he had to move on. 

And so did she. 

Never has a second chance meant so much to a boy who loves a girl. 

Five

“Control freak with a side of sexy!”

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💚💛
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌏
Character development: 😠☺️😋😉
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Aurora Shrike (a.k.a. Rory) – she is attending Princeton and is about to get off for the summer when her brother Oliver texts her that she should come home because Five is there. She grew up with Five since her father and his father were best friends. Though she has been planning to go to the Hamptons to stay at her roommate’s parents’ house for the summer. She has been dating a guy named Cliff, who is her best friends’ brother, for about a week and she is happy with her life and her plans for the summer.

The Heroes: Rutherford Aston V (a.k.a. Five) – he went to London and stayed away for six years. He had known and protected Rory Shrike since they were children, but they got to a point where they had to move on and he did, not returning home till the summer while Rory was at Princeton.

The Story: Rory flies’ home to have it out with Five. Though she is surprised that he isn’t at the house with everyone else when she arrives. So, she leaves, but ends up seeing him anyway. He didn’t want to see her, and she figured that out. Five was all very mysterious about why he was back and what he came to do as well as the reason he cut off contact with her.

This was an odd book because in some places it is labeled Mister, book 0.5 and some places it was labeled as Mister, book 6. So I figured it would take place sometime during the 10 years between when the Misters got their names and when book 1 began. However, most of this one took place before the incident where the Misters were accused of rape.

This story was also pretty surprising, though I don’t know why I am surprised since Five was an enigma throughout the five books of the Mister series. Those stories never went too far into his background and none of the guys really knew much about him. Suffice it to say he has a lot of secrets and they were huge ones. I thought the book would center more around Rory since we know from the mister series that she was invited to the silver society and turned them down then disappeared, so I thought this entire book would be about that.

It was about both of the main characters, but I was glad when the story finally got to the silver envelope that Rory gets. She thinks she is joining a Princeton eating club which is similar to a fraternity/sorority, but more centered around having a house to eat meals and get together with members. The story did get really good and was much more complex than I expected.

Rory’s stupidity made me mad though. She knew from the first that the whole thing was shady, but she didn’t up and leave like she wanted to because she wanted to make it to the final part where she learned their secrets. I wanted her to just say F this and walk away when it looked so shady.

This book is told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Anna Reardon. Anna has a soft feminine voice which I really enjoyed. Teddy Hamilton is another one of my favorite narrators and he always does a great job so I wasn’t surprised at this one. There were a lot of good narrators in this series and I love that different narrators did each book.

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