Title: The Bastard
Author:  Lisa Renee Jones
Publisher/Year:  Julie Patra Publishing 11.14.18
Length:   200 Pages
Series:  Filthy Duet #1

Overview

I’m the bastard child, son to the mistress, my father’s backup heir to the Kingston empire. He sent me to Harvard. I left and became a Navy SEAL, but I’m back now, and I finished school on my own dime. I’m now the right hand man to Grayson  Bennett, the billionaire who runs the Bennett Empire. I’m now a few months from being a billionaire myself. I don’t need my father’s company or his love. My “brother” can have it. I will never go back there. I will never be the mistake my father made, the way he was the mistake my mother made.

And then she walks in the door, the princess I’d once wanted more than I’d wanted my father’s love. She wants me to come back. She says my father needs to be saved. I don’t want to save my father but I do want her. Deeply. Passionately. More than I want anything else.

But she’s The Princess and I’m The Bastard. We don’t fit. We don’t belong together and yet she says he needs me, that she needs me. We’re like sugar and spice, we don’t mix, but I really crave a taste. Just one. What harm can just one taste do?

My Thoughts

I do love a good new series by Lisa Renee Jones, and this one – this intro doesn’t let us down.  We’re introduced into a world that we’re not quite clear about, with characters that we don’t know, but that makes it all that much more interesting.

Eric, our main, we know that he was semi born into a family that has power and money, but who want nothing to do with him since he doesn’t play by their rules.  He tried for a while and then decided that he needed to be his own moral compass and go on his own.  He’s made a name for himself, but at the sacrifice of losing the woman who’s struck him like no other.  his step sister….

Enter Harper – a girl who’s mom married into the family, a girl who wants to make her mother happy, and yet a girl who knows when something is wrong but can’t solve the problems on her own.  The fact that Eric got under her skin years ago as well means that she’s apprehensive to ask for his help yet she knows there is no alternative.

The journey that we go on from here is a story where we honestly don’t know what’s going on, who’s behind what and what it means for our characters.  Eric and Harper clearly have chemistry from years past, but is it something that’s sustainable and even realistic now?  do they even trust each other?  that’s the biggest question of all.

The nice way that our author writes this first intro to the series is in a back and forth in the chapters from each character’s POV.  We get to see how Eric’s mind works and then how Harper’s mind works as well. They have the same end game but they want to get there differently because of what it means to those they care about.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out a few things in this story.  What’s actually going on in Kingston Motors and who’s behind it?  What secrets are being kept from Harper and Eric and what secrets are Harper keeping from Eric as well since we know that there have to be some?  what’s to gain and lose here and what will that mean for the pair that seems like maybe there’s something more concrete between them.

There’s intense heat and chemistry that’s laid out on the table here and then there’s angst and mystery wrapping all around it.  we’re left on a cliff hanger of one person leaving .  hatred is exploding all around, distrust is something that’s coming at us from all angles.  A huge secret is revealed, one that i should have known that i didn’t think about that tears our world apart, and then someone’s in danger – imminently.

What this means for us though is that i really want to know what’s going to happen next, what’s happening now and where we go from here.  I can’t wait for book 2 and i’m sad that i have to!  i hope you guys check this one out – enjoy!