Title: Giving In
Author: Maya Banks
Publisher/Year:  Penguin Group 5/6/14
Length:   225 Pages
Series:  The Surrender Trilogy #2

Overview

In her sensational Breathless Trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Maya Banks tested the boundaries of desire. In her new trilogy, there’s only one thing left to do: cross them. Now, the story continues as one woman, haunted by the shadows of the past, explores the possibilities of a new beginning in ways she never could have imagined…

Kylie sees the way Jensen looks at her. The dark promise in his eyes. That rough edge of dominance she knows he possesses. But dominance is the one thing that frightens her above all else. She and her brother barely survived a childhood steeped in violence and abuse. She could never give up total control and submit to a man. Especially a man like Jensen. Could she?

Jensen sees the shadows in Kylie’s eyes. Knows he has to tread very carefully or risk losing any chance he has with her. All he wants is the opportunity to show her that dominance doesn’t equal pain, bondage or discipline. That emotional surrender is the most powerful of all, and that to submit fully to him will fulfill the aching void in her heart in a way nothing else ever will.

My Thoughts

We return to the world that we met Dash and Joss in, to explore and dive deeper into what makes Kylie tick.  As you’ll remember, in book 1, Joss was getting over the death of her husband, that same man who is Kylie’s brother.  So we see that along with the death of her brother, the only person that she felt protected her from anything and loved her, she’s also trying to figure out how to live with all that she went through in abuse from her father when she was a child.  Of course, that means that she’s got an aversion to men, dominant men, so when Jensen Tucker comes in and takes on the role of Partner in their business, things go from ‘eh’ to downright uncomfortable.

Jensen quickly realizes that he doesn’t need to have his fully dominant persona be in play at all moments because he realizes that Kylie is what he wants and she’s terrified of all that.  In the same moment, Kylie realizes that while she’s got this disdain and hate for him, there’s also something else there.

Where we go in this 2nd installment of the series, is that we get to see Kylie being forced to come to terms with the confident and strong person that she is, along with finding herself to be able to be ‘happy’ and come alive at the hands of a man.

It’s a sweet story – one that we see time and time again though – both main characters have dark dark backgrounds that will of course pull them apart.  When they open themselves up to one another, we see that it does more harm than good – and Kylie ends up getting hurt and Jensen does what he thinks is best, which means breaking up with her and going their separate ways.  It’s only through girl squad power that Kylie is able to deal with things, and we see what that means for the remainder of the story.

One thing to note with this book – what we usually get from Ms Banks in the forms of a really hot and steamy, naughty book – all those elements are there, but i feel like something was missing.  it wasn’t as hard hitting as we usually get but i don’t know if it’s me. There are steamy bedroom scenes for sure – which are always core to what we get with Ms Banks, but i feel like the rest of the story was just a bit ‘less deep’ than we usually get.

In any event, i can’t wait to see what happens in book 3 with Chessy and Tate since we all know that something is brewing there.