Title: Hard Rules
Author: Lisa Renee Jones
Publisher/Year:  St Martin Press 8/9/16
Length:   304 Pages
Series:  Dirty Money #1

Overview

How bad do you want it?

The only man within the Brandon empire with a moral compass, Shane Brandon is ready to take his family’s business dealings legitimate. His reckless and ruthless brother, Derek wants to keep Brandon Enterprises cemented in lies, deceit, and corruption. But the harder Shane fights to pull the company back into the light, the darker he has to become. Then he meets Emily Stevens, a woman who not only stirs a voracious sexual need in him, but becomes the only thing anchoring him between good and evil.

Emily is consumed by Shane, pushed sexually in ways she never dreamed of, falling deeper into the all-encompassing passion that is this man. She trusts him. He trusts her, but therein lies the danger. Emily has a secret, the very thing that brought her to him in the first place, and that secret that could that destroy them both.

My Thoughts

I always love getting into new series by Ms Jones because there’s always such amazing character dynamic and story line to fulfill your every need.  In this story – we’re quickly diving deep into a family war through Shane and his family while really not knowing much of anything about Emily’s life.

The interesting set up with this story is that the first chapter that we get isn’t directly related to the story that we have, yet it’s clear as you read through this first installment that it’s intertwined more than you knew.  who the characters are though – well we’ll have to wait and see.

So with Emily – she’s our strong female who’s got a past to hide from, which we still don’t learn much about, but we see that she’s independent, strong, sexy and a force to be reckoned with.  Shane on the other hand is a typical leading man from what we get from our amazing author.  He’s powerful, controlling and intensely sexy.  Their connection is off the charts from the moment they meet in a coffee store.

Where we go in this first book is a journey of still not finding out much, but wanting to know more.  We know that Shane’s trying to clean up his family’s dirty business all in the hopes to do so before his father dies from cancer, or to do it enough to get control of the business before it happens.  There’s so much more going on than anyone knows, and we meet characters along the way that find themselves mixed into things beyond their control.

On top of this compelling story line, there’s the expected sexual chemistry between these 2 that means that they can’t stay away from each other, no matter how much Shane tries to make that happen.  All he wants is to protect Emily but she’s not having it.

So – when Seth (Shane’s security dude) finds out some interesting things about Emily – all hell breaks loose and this is where we are left off at the end of this story.  Amazing intro to the series and i honestly and bummed that we have to wait until Feb to get the next book.

Have a great weekend everyone!