Hostage by Annika Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I NEVER KNEW WHEN HE’D COME TO ME. ONLY THAT HE WOULD.
Hostage
I’d never even kissed a boy the night I met Stone. The night I saw him kill. The night he spared my life. That was only the beginning.
He turns up in my car again and again, dangerous and full of raw power. “Drive,” he tells me, and I have no choice. He’s a criminal with burning green eyes, invading my life and my dreams.
The police say he’s dangerously obsessed with me, but I’m the one who can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe it’s wrong to let him touch me. Maybe it’s wrong to touch him back. Maybe these twisted dates need to stop. Except he feels like the only real thing in my world of designer labels and mansions.
So I drive us under threat, until it’s hard to remember I don’t want to be there.
Until it’s too late to turn back.
“Clinging to your killer, that’s a powerful and horrible kind of intimacy.”
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️💜💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌏
Character development: 😚☹️🥹😉🥰
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration
The Hero: Stone – he is the leader of his crew of friends, they considered themselves brothers. When they were young, they were kidnapped and trafficked. They were held together in a basement for six years and forced to do things that no child should ever be any part of. Now they lived as outlaws and owned the Bradford Hotel, which had been abandoned until they bought it through an LLC and it looks rundown on the outside, though it is nice on the inside and the basement garage even holds all their fancy dream cars, that they love but can’t really use as they would draw too much attention. They are determined to get revenge on all the men that held them all those years.
The heroine: Brooke – She comes from a wealthy background, but as she turns sixteen, her family is falling apart. Her father’s construction business is crumbling, and her family is doing everything it can to keep up appearances. They throw her a lavish sweet sixteen like is expected in their circle of friends and clients. She wears a size two secondhand Givenchy gown and barely fits, she has been hungry for a long time, but her parents make her preserve the illusion of prosperity. When she nearly has a panic attack, she goes outside in the alley for air, and she sees a man savagely beating another man.
The Story: Brooke is so nervous she isn’t able to unlock her phone to call 911, so she stepped up and told the man to stop. Stone was trying to get a name from the man he was beating, the man was one of those men and he deserved to die, though Stone had a lot on his shoulders as the leader of their crew. His brother Greyson was set up for the murder of a cop and in prison, Stone had to figure a way to get him out as well as finding and taking revenge against all the men who hurt them. So, he takes Brooke hostage while murders the man and disposes of his body. He finds himself feeling something for Brooke and though he plans to kill her, he ends up letting her go with threats against her family and friends if she talks.
I really loved the first book, Prisoner and this one was every bit as good. This was my second time with this book, I read it over 6 years ago, so this time I listened to the audiobook. I love that Stone can’t keep himself away from Brooke after letting her go when she was sixteen. I wish these two authors would have continued this series with stories about the rest of the crew of guys. I want more.
I love that the Heroes are morally grey, but they are good to their women, and I love that they are getting revenge against the men who hurt them. I kind of hate reading and listening to human trafficking stories, but I just love it when people who do that kind of thing get their karmic retribution. I hope that happens more in real life than I think. This book had action, steam and a lot of conflict.
This audiobook was told in two points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Jacob Morgan and Lauren Sweet. Jacob Morgan is one of my favorite male narrators and always does a great job. He has a nice deep gravelly voice and sounds so natural; not like he is reading at all. He is one narrator I could listen to non-stop, and he sounds so sexy in the intimate scenes. Lauren Sweet is not one of my favorites. Her voice annoys me a bit. She also sounds a bit too perky and sounds a bit loud when she is voicing different characters.
“This isn’t about justice; this is revenge pure and simple.”
“How much is it worth to feel alive? A little fear seems like a small price to pay.”
“I always thought of the world as a kind of lush garden I was being kept secluded from, but it’s more like a jungle—dangerous, wild, and fiercely beautiful.”
“Every single one of us has our demons. Whether it’s sex or blood or drugs. There’s something we use to numb the pain. Or, worse, something we use to relive it. What happened back then fucked us up so we’re not really human anymore. We’re animals with damn-near unlimited funds and access to the world’s worst vices”
“Only an asshole refuses to let his mind be changed by new information”
“I used to think heaven would be someplace alone, someplace secret. Where no one could touch me. Hurt me. Not that I would ever make it to heaven, but it was something to dream about”
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