Title: Mine to Take
Author: Jackie Ashenden
Publisher/Year: St Martin’s Press 11/25/14
Length: 384 Pages
Series: Nine Circles #1
Overview
First in a brand new series by Jackie Ashenden featuring the members of the Nine Circles Club—friends bound together by power, secrets, need…and the love they will find and stop at nothing to keep.
Passion always comes at a price.
Gabriel Woolf is unstoppable. A ruthless businessman, he has perfected the art of revenge. Ever since his mother’s death, Gabriel has harbored only one wish: To take down the man who ruined their lives. But all bets are off when he meets his father’s step daughter, Honor St. James. Beautiful and innocent, she is everything Gabriel never knew he wanted—and now there’s no turning back…
Is her desire worth the risk?
Honor wasn’t born yesterday. She knows that Gabriel is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, willing to cross any line to get what he wants…herself included. But Gabriel’s passion for Honor—in spite of her connection to the man he hates the most—cannot be denied…and the feeling is utterly mutual. Can Gabriel be trusted? The only thing she knows for sure is how he makes her feel. And she can’t keep herself from coming back to him, over and over again…in Mine to Take.
My Thoughts
As you can tell, lately Jackie Ashenden has become a favorite of mine since i’ve read a bunch of her series (thank you Netgalley for the intro). So i tracked down this series that’s been around for a while just not on my radar. And it’s good.
What we have here is the first installment to a new series around the premise of a group of Billionaires that consider themselves more family than just friends, and what brings them together is not just business, but similar backgrounds, pasts that haunt them and a need to do right in the world.
This book takes us on the journey of Gabriel who’s out for vengeance on the man who raped his mother and is therefore his father. He’s got information leading him to the man, and now he’s going to not only take him down, but make him regret his whole life. The challenge of course is that the man is his friend Alex’s step father and Alex has a sister who’s tied up in the business that Gabe wants to ruin. meaning, collateral damage.
The sister – Honor – well she of course makes things more complicated. We all know from the way that all stories are told is that when there’s a girl in the mix, well you know that there will be manipulation from Gabriel to get what he wants but of course there will be feelings and emotion since she’ll get under his skin – making the end game more compelling.
Honor fights him every step of the way – she wants to save her step father’s business and she wants to save her own business since she’s invested in him. And when Gabe offers a solution, she’s willing to jump through hoops to secure his investment, even if it means pushing herself to places and points that are uncomfortable.
The way that Ms Ashenden writes this story is really compelling. (yes i’ve used that word already). The relationship and dynamic between Honor and Gabe is intense and we see how his need to control takes Honor to places she can’t imagine. There’s also the challenge of the point that Honor is Alex’s sister and so the secrets that develop making for so much more anxiety.
Where this story takes us is a point of real confusion since there are so many more secrets that we couldn’t even expect – that we couldn’t put together already that even though we get resolution of sorts to things, there are so many more surprises that just carry us to the need to read the next book. which i’m about to do.
So all in all, lots of great intrigue in the story itself and the sceneing between Gabriel and Honor make the heat and passion leap off the pages. Definitely a great introduction to the series and i can’t wait to see where we go from there. There are 3 others in the Circle and i know that their stories have to be as exciting. enjoy!