Review – Hard Rules by Lisa Renee Jones

Hard Rules by Lisa Renee Jones
Published by St. Martin's Press
on 9 August 2016
Pages: 304
Genres: Romance, Suspense


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Wall Street meets the Sons of Anarchy in Hard Rules, the smoldering, scorching first novel in the explosively sexy new Dirty Money series from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones.

How bad do you want it? 

The only man within the Brandon empire with a moral compass, Shane Brandon is ready to take his family's business dealings legitimate. His reckless and ruthless brother, Derek wants to keep Brandon Enterprises cemented in lies, deceit, and corruption. But the harder Shane fights to pull the company back into the light, the darker he has to become. Then he meets Emily Stevens, a woman who not only stirs a voracious sexual need in him, but becomes the only thing anchoring him between good and evil.

Emily is consumed by Shane, pushed sexually in ways she never dreamed of, falling deeper into the all-encompassing passion that is this man. She trusts him. He trusts her, but therein lies the danger. Emily has a secret, the very thing that brought her to him in the first place, and that secret that could that destroy them both.

I was provided a review copy; this did not influence my opinion of the book.

❝Yes and please. Remember those words and my name because I’m going to make you say them over and over again.❞

Hard Rules is about a man, Shane Brandon, who comes back to town to save his family’s business from the corruption which is caused by his father and brother. Along the way, he meets a woman who he fully intended only as a one-night-stand, or at the very least a f*ck buddy. But the more he has of her, the more he wants despite the danger he fears he may be putting her in by associating with his family.

Emily Stevens has come to live in Denver and as it happens, she was just hired at his company as his father’s assistant. She needs the job and is afraid of losing it once everyone finds out she is having an affair with one of her bosses. There is also a little mystery surrounding her, what caused her to be there and who the heck is she talking to on those burner phones?

I enjoyed the first part of the book, I was intrigued by the mystery surrounding the business. I liked Shane’s POV. I could have read more about the happenings and mishaps of the business (which I know we will get in book #2).

What I didn’t care for as much was the middle through to the end. I felt things progressed slowly, too slowly for me. I found myself skimming to get past the stuff I didn’t care about. Mainly, Emilie’s POV. She drove me nuts with the number of times she talked about how she couldn’t and shouldn’t be in their relationship, then Shane would talk her into having sex and bam, she was back in the relationship again. This back and forth was too repetitive. Also, to go an entire book without any real information about her and why she was there, who she was talking to etc. was maddening. I realize this is a series, so things need to be withheld, but we also need a little information to keep us interested to read the rest.

Will I read the next book, probably because I want to know what is going to happen with his family’s business and see how that plays out. I really enjoyed that aspect of ‘Hard Rules’.

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