Title: Hostage
Author: Annika Martin + Skye Warren
Publisher/Year:  CreateSpace Publishing 1/27/18
Length:  410 pages
Series: Criminals & Captives #2

Overview

I NEVER KNEW WHEN HE’D COME TO ME. ONLY THAT HE WOULD.

I’d never even kissed a boy the night I met Stone. The night I saw him kill. The night he spared my life. That was only the beginning.

He turns up in my car again and again, dangerous and full of raw power. “Drive,” he tells me, and I have no choice. He’s a criminal with burning green eyes, invading my life and my dreams.

The police say he’s dangerously obsessed with me, but I’m the one who can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe it’s wrong to let him touch me. Maybe it’s wrong to touch him back. Maybe these twisted dates need to stop. Except he feels like the only real thing in my world of designer labels and mansions.

So I drive us under threat, until it’s hard to remember I don’t want to be there.

Until it’s too late to turn back.

My Thoughts

We met Stone in the story with Grayson and Abby’s story and learned quite a bit about him. He was the protector, the oldest of the crew and the one that has a clear perspective of what the rules needed to be in order to survive. He watched them get bent and broken when Grayson found love and now it’s time to watch him fall down the same rabbit hole.

Brooke – our leading lady is the center of our story. We meet her the night of her sweet sixteen, her family is throwing a party for ‘society’ to keep up the optics that they are as successful as people want them to be. Her father’s business isn’t doing so well, and it’s when she needs to get away from the party – that’s when she crosses paths with Stone and her world flips.

Stone is trying to get information from a man who was at the party and that turns into Brooke being taken hostage sort of while the man is put in the back of a van, and finds his own demise.

From that point on, we know that Brooke will be seeing the world through different eyes. She’s not even sure if Stone will let her live, will let her go….she’s haunted by him. but she’s also mesmerized by him. Stone is everything that’s not allowed – he’s dangerous, he’s scary and he he has the potential to give her the freedom that she wants but isn’t allowed to have.

This story takes us on a journey of their varied interactions over a series of years. We watch how Stone realizes that Grayson wasn’t wrong – there’s potential for love even with their background, but Stone is so afraid to let that become a distraction knowing that they still need to save the boys that are living the same life that they had when they were taken. They are looking for hints and clues to where the operation has moved to once they escaped and they keep running into dead ends.

Brooke seems to be the one distraction that he allows himself, knowing that he in part want to protect her, but can’t let her go. His protection turns to jealousy one night and then things really change for them both – he’s the one person that she wants, and he’s always allowed her to see the real him. because of that, they change their relationship on several levels, not intentionally, all in one night.

Brooke gets what she’s been missing from life and Stone for years, and she accidentally says something on her way to sleep that gives Stone what he’s been looking for. A name.

The rest of the story shows us that people are never what they seem, and everything that they think they know probably isn’t real. Brooke is still to ‘innocent’ to know who to trust and what information to share with whom, and that’s where our story takes an unexpected turn.

We get the ending that’s needed for this story – and we see how relationships and families are ripped apart, built differently and resolved. So, enjoy!