Hostage (Criminals & Captives #2) by Annika Martin

🌟🌟🌟🌟 out of 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Synopsis:

I NEVER KNEW WHEN HE'D COME TO ME. ONLY THAT HE WOULD.

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.

HOSTAGE is a dangerous standalone romance by New York Times bestselling authors Skye Warren and Annika Martin. It’s set in the same world as PRISONER, but can read separately!

 

 

Hostage had just the right blend of dark and light to make it a great dark romance. The authors make no apologies for either of the main characters and their behavior but they allowed each of them to have enough light within to make the romance believable. Stone is dead set on getting revenge on the people that brutalized him and his brothers for years. He is so focused on that mission that he has allowed himself to become a hardened killer without remorse for the acts that he commits. There is another vulnerable side of him that is unlocked by the introduction of Brooke into the story. She is very sheltered but at the same time has a worldliness to her that ages her. She has been forced to fit into a box by her family in order to further her father's business. Brooke is essentially a prop to be used when necessary. Each of the main characters seemed to understand each other on a fundamental level due to each of them feeling trapped at some point during their lives.

I found the romance between them interesting. It didn't feel like a romance for quite a bit of the book which I attribute to each of them having conflicting feelings about the other. I also thought that it was due to Stone not knowing anything about relationships and love. Both of these reasons made for a page turning relationship that develops between them as the story progresses. I liked each of the characters quite a bit but I think that it was their relationship that had me fascinated and wanting to read more. I haven't read the other book in the Criminals and Captives series but I am definitely adding it to my TBR list since I enjoyed this one so much.