Kingpin by Eden O’Neill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“I’m going to have fun breaking you, beauty queen.”
Kingpin
They call him kingpin. A blond titan with the looks of a god, the wealth of a king, and the influence of the mob. Lance Johnson is the guy you go to when you want anything on Woodcreek University’s campus.
And I mean, anything.
He’s got more than one dean in his pocket, as well as nearly all the university’s staff—the professor I’m a TA for included.
He’s got grown men and respected scholars by their balls, but he doesn’t have me.
I have a direct hand over his academic future and not only does he know that, he gets off on it. He tests me in any ways he can. He plays with me and pushes our boundaries to the point of their brink. He doesn’t care that I control his grades.
And definitely doesn’t care that I have a boyfriend.
He says I’m nothing but a perfect, little beauty queen. A plaything he can’t wait to break. He sets his sight on me and I’m a target of the most powerful man I’ve ever seen.
He has to be if I let him kiss me.
Player, player!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🤨😟😳😍
The heroine: Billie – she was attending graduate school near her hometown. Billie grew up in a wealthy family though while she was attending college on the west coast her dad, a prominent lawyer, left her mom for a woman old enough to be Billie’s sister. She has barely spoken to him since, but recently got an invitation to his wedding. Billie’s boyfriend is Sinclair Huntington the third and he is partner in his family law firm in town.
The Hero: Lance Johnson (a.k.a. L.J.) – he is a self made man, who basically runs all the illicit enterprises at his college. He came from nothing, a single mother with three younger sisters whom he helped raise and still supports. He and his friend Niko have a hand in everything from who gets to sell drugs on campus to promoting the best parties on campus. He lives in a mansion across the street from where Billie just rented a house.
The Story: The two main characters meet the day before classes begin when Billie is woken up by the loud noise of a party across the street. Billie and Sinclair go over to tell the neighbors to keep it down. They go into the house to get out of the cold, when Billie gets spilt on, then drenched by the faucet and ends up in L.J.’s bedroom where he mistakes her for a stripper before kissing her. Suffice it to say, their initial meeting doesn’t go as planned. The next day she finds out he is in the class where she is a teaching assistant and he makes her look bad in front of the professor.
“You do know they call him the kingpin, right?” Davey asked, basically gnawing on her lip as she turned back. “As in, he is the ins and outs of everything around here? You need drugs? He knows a guy. Test answers? Again, he knows a guy. Fuck, even if you want sex—”
Though this book I would say went a little too far after Billie caught Lance naked in her mother’s bed. I was kind of liking the story up until that point. Though he didn’t know she was Billie’s mother at the time, I just can’t even imagine having any attraction to or getting with any guy my mother had been with. So even if I had been attracted to him at one time, that there would have been the end of it and should have been for Billie, in my opinion.
Though I did like how the relationship between Billie and L.J. built over time. They were so attracted to each other from the start, but neither of them really wanted any kind of relationship with the other. However, over time, they got to know each other and for the fact that they lived near each other and that L.J. was in Billie’s class where she was the TA, they kept ending up in close proximity where they couldn’t really help themselves. I could see why they happened. There was also a side storyline about illegal activities that was pretty interesting.
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