Title: Beneath This Man
Author: Jodi Ellen Malpas
Publisher/Year: Grand Central Publishing 1/15/1313
Length: 544 pages
Series: This Man #2
Overview
Book 2 of the #1 New York Times bestselling This Man trilogy
Jesse Ward drowned her with his intensity and blindsided her with his passion, but he kept her away from his dark secrets and broken soul. Leaving him was the only way Ava O’Shea could survive. She should have known that Jesse Ward is impossible to escape—and now he’s back in her life, determined to remind her of the sensual pleasures they had shared. Ava is equally determined to get at the truth beneath this man’s steely exterior. That means letting herself get close to the Lord of the Manor once more. And it’s exactly where Jesse wants her—within touching distance…
My Thoughts
I’m so deep into this story that i don’t even know what to make of it. What we know from the first introduction into this series is that Jesse and Ava has something so deep and passionate that they are certain to self destruct or cause the other to do that. We saw it start to happen in book 1 especially with how things ended and picked up in this 2nd installment right on that same roller coaster.
This 2nd book continues the story with Ava and Jesse – with Ava continuing to try to push to learn more about what makes Jesse the way that he is all the while trying to accept what it is that he does since it was all smoke and mirrors so far. This installment takes on a few dark paths that you wonder if it’s love that keeps them together or fear that maybe this is the best that they can get. While we continue to see that Jesse is incredibly overprotective, we don’t quite know the extent to what he thinks he’s protecting her from, and Ava doesn’t make it easy on him. She manages to land herself in a few less than savory encounters where it’s lucky that Jesse is so overbearing.
What i really love about this story is that we get a heated passionate relationship that seems to have endless depth. While we know that there’s a LOT going on under the surface, we’re not left feeling like we need to get there to have a complete story. What we get is quite enough and maybe more than what i’ve read in a lot of other series.
The other interesting piece is all of the supporting characters that we know and have seen along the way. Reading this from Ava’s perspective, we certainly know where we want things to go and know waht’s going on in folks’ heads, but it’s nice to know that things haven’t been resolved overly cleanly just yet, meaning that book 3 will be a GREAT finale if things continue as they do.
I actually have some continued questions though that i can’t wait to see a resolution of
1) what’s the culmination of the latest phase of their relationship?
2) is Ava preggo? i mean – we all know that Jesse’s taking her pills right?
3) What’s Sarah’s motive and how far is she willing to go?
4) is there more to John than we know and what does that mean?
5) Kate and Sam – what’s their deal? I kind of hope that we get a spin off of them based on what we’ve seen so far, yet i don’t know if it really is ‘just fun’ like Kate keeps claiming.
onto the finale for me since i’ve already got it downloaded!