Ella James (1)

*eARC provided by NetGalley/Publisher for honest review..Also downloaded while free on Amazon*

The cover and title alone drew me in. The first 40% seemed to drag on forever with a ton of unnecessary details thrown in; or at least the seemed unnecessary to me. Hunter is one screwed up alpha male and Elizabeth/Lizzy/Liz/Libby is an enigma to most.

Libby is a 23 year old virgin whom has had a crush on Hunter for years. The book starts off with Libby, Hunter, Cross and Suri all at a party that Hunter is throwing at his Vineyard in Napa. Things happen and Libby ends up in Hunter's bed, it really isn't what you think; though things get slightly sexual no actual sex is had. Libby freaks after seeing Hunter with Priscilla the porn star and runs into her friend Cross on her way out.
Cross thinks the worse and take off on his motorcycle and ends up having an accident. He is in a coma and when his parents take him out of the expensive rehab center and place him in a state run facility, Libby decides that she has to go something to get him back to where he was. What she eventually comes up with is selling her V-card. She ends up heading to Love Inc. which is a high end brothel run by Hunter's best friend. Libby is taken in by the girls that work there and she feels like she has made friends with at least two of them.
Then she sees Hunter and things heat up again.. After a tryst in the sauna Libby keeps her distance from Hunter and throws herself into getting ready for her "sale".
Through everything we get chapters from Hunter's POV, which had my head spinning most of the time. A girl that worked at Love Inc ends up missing after spending the night with Hunter and he seems to be the main suspect. He thinks that Priscilla is behind the kidnapping and him and his BBF hire P.I.s to follow her and another guy and find out what they can. Things from Hunter's POV are jumpy and left me feeling drugged most of the time.
Without giving anything away, the sale happens, "Scarlett" goes for 10 million and she can now pay for Cross's care at the rehab facility and then some. The missing girl is found but not alive and things in Hunter's past come to light. There is a HEA and I was glad that things wrapped up like they did.… (plus d'informations)

The pacing was weird on this one. It's quick out of the gate with sex scenes, it felt like there were about 12, lol, and then there's a long slow part where they hardly interact at all, and I assumed that that was a middle part and it would pick back up, but instead it just barely teased something more and then abruptly ended. I'm intrigued enough to read the next one, but because of the pacing and cutoff, I don't feel all that satisfied with this as a free-standing story. I think probably they should have just been combined to begin with to achieve more of a narrative arc. Perhaps the next one will pull it all together.… (plus d'informations)